


the red string around your neck

by FullmetalChords



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Forbidden Love, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Religious Guilt, Secret Relationship, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Trans Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:01:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21619558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FullmetalChords/pseuds/FullmetalChords
Summary: “I see you’ve already found your soulmate,” Dimitri says after several minutes of polite conversation, prompting Claude to raise his eyebrows behind his teacup.“Yeah,” he admits, setting it back down on the saucer. “Hilda. You couldn’t tell?”Looking back, Dimitri supposes it’s obvious. They have only been at Garreg Mach for a few weeks, but he’s already noticed how close Hilda and Claude are. He should have already assumed that they are fated to one another, bound by the hand of the Goddess Herself.“I…” Dimitri stops, his voice unaccountably strained. “I hope you two will find happiness together.”“We get by.” Claude’s tone is bright, the way it gets when Claude shares his half-truths.--In a Fodlan where love and marriages are determined by markings on a person's wrist, two house leaders form an unexpected, powerful connection that will change the course of history.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan, Hilda Valentine Goneril & Claude von Riegan
Comments: 60
Kudos: 432





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So... hello. Trying my hand at multichapter fics once again! 
> 
> Regarding the soulmate pairings in this fic: Spoiler alert, Dimitri and Felix will not end up together romantically, and neither will Claude and Hilda. This is, first and foremost, a Dimiclaude fic. My goal in writing this fic, however, is not to "debunk" or otherwise bash Dimilix or Clilda, but to demonstrate the different forms of love and relationships, and how all (not just the romantic variety) are equally valid. I am working hard to avoid any kind of character assassination, especially on the part of Felix, and am committed to showing how these relationships end up being important even outside of the realm of ~romance~. It'll be a journey there, but one I hope you will find satisfying.
> 
> So if you're still on board, feel free to read on!

Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd does not remember meeting his soulmate.

He was too young, when it happened, to be able to form memories of his own, although Rodrigue and his father have recounted the tale to him so many times that he thinks he remembers it happening. Dimitri had been barely a year old, propped on his mother’s hip with his fingers in his mouth, when Rodrigue Achille Fraldarius had presented his younger child to the royal court at Fhirdiad. And then—

Then, both Dimitri and the baby had started screaming in unison, prompting their parents to hold them close, shushing their tears while searching for the source of their children’s distress. But the truth was, both boys had been too young to understand the sharp pain at their inner wrists, or why this moment would bind them together for the rest of their lives. 

They were far, far too young to understand the significance of the soulmarks they’d been born with. 

A soulmate was, according to the Archbishop, another gift from the Goddess, along with the Crests many noble children were born with. All people, both noble and common, are matched to one another at the moment of their birth, and it is their duty, as loyal servants of the Goddess, to find their fated match and spend their lives with them, in order to ensure their happiness. In order to make sure they locate their correct mate, each person is also born with a marking on the inside of their left wrist, which manifests into a clear, dark shape the moment their eyes connect with those of their soulmate, binding them together forever. 

(The holy texts describe the feeling of a soulmark manifesting as a comforting glow inside one’s skin, reminiscent of the goddess’s love. They never once describe it as the burning sensation both Dimitri and Felix had felt as infants.)

The very concept of a soulmate, the soul’s perfect companion, ensures that none of the Goddess’s children would ever be alone. When he grew older, Dimitri would think about the concept with no small amount of romanticism: a cure-all for all his troubles, the one person in the world who would complement all of Dimitri’s good traits and smooth out all his rough edges. Someone who would stay by his side, always, encouraging him to be the best version of himself. 

How lucky he was, everyone tells him, to have found that person so early in life. 

But as a child, Dimitri hadn’t cared about any of that. All he’d known was that Felix was never far from his side, always making sure he had someone to play with. When they were little, Dimitri had been entranced by the matching marks on their wrists, which resemble winged shields: a crude approximation of the Fraldarius crest flanked by the jagged edges of the Blaiddyd crest. His father called it a soulmark, which, to young Dimitri, meant only that Felix was special to him, that they would always be together even as they got older. 

He had little concept of the contract their fathers had drawn up, an arrangement for him and Felix to wed once they both came of age. He had little concept of the idea of a lifetime, or of the responsibilities they would hold to one another and to Faerghus, set in stone by the Goddess. 

At seven years old, small for his age and already mercurial, Felix had seemed to realize these things much, much earlier than Dimitri. There was a day that Dimitri still remembers clearly, as they played in the fields around Castle Fraldarius, when he’d realized how much smarter than him Felix was. 

“I don’t want to be your queen, Dima.” 

Felix had spoken the words, scowling as he walked along a short stone wall, heel to toe. Dimitri walked on the ground alongside him, keeping half an eye on him to make sure he didn’t fall. 

“Huh?” Dimitri had frowned too, trying to understand what Felix was saying. “Why would you be my queen? Queens are fine ladies.”

“Right.” Felix had hopped off the wall, glaring up at Dimitri despite being a full head shorter. “And I’m _not_ a fine lady. I won’t ever be.”

Dimitri had understood, then, with an acuteness that fully grown adults had a difficult time grasping at that point in Felix’s life. Knowing why his soulmate insisted on being called _Felix_ , why he refused to wear any of the fine silk dresses his lady mother commissioned for him. Why he demanded to spar with Dimitri and Sylvain despite being desperately outmatched in strength and size, getting up and wiping the tears off his face before demanding a rematch. Trying so hard to be seen as one of the boys, even while most of the adults around them were unable or unwilling to recognize Felix for who he was. 

“All right,” Dimitri had decided. “Then you can be my finest knight. Or…” He’d frowned. “What do they call a second king?”

Felix had fallen back on his heels, looking downcast. 

“Don’t want to be another king, either.” His dark eyes had gone teary, and he’d scrubbed at them with the heels of his hands. “I just wanna be _me_.”

He’d looked with some venom at the mark on his forearm, and Dimitri had frowned down at his matching one, trying to understand Felix’s meaning. It would be years before he would fully comprehend Felix’s anger, already deeply rooted in something beyond either of their control. It would be even longer before Dimitri could understand that none of it was his fault.

But in that moment, Dimitri could only feel the beginnings of the guilt that his mere existence was causing his closest friend pain. 

—

Ingrid Brandl Galatea matches with Felix’s brother two years later, when she is nine and Glenn fourteen. Ingrid is bright and bubbly — she loves playing knights with Dimitri and his other friends, her blond braids flying behind her as she swings her lance. 

When they are not playing at war, Ingrid often talks in glowing terms about her soulmate, who is often away from House Fraldarius as he trains to be a squire.

“Glenn is so noble,” she sighs, tracing the lines of her blackened soulmark with a fingertip. “Chivalrous, and hardworking. And so handsome… I can only hope I’ll be half the knight he will be.”

“Aww, Ing, you’re already plenty handsome,” Sylvain teases, and she shoves him, hard, in the ribs while blushing. Of the four of them, he is the one whose soulmark has yet to fully manifest, currently an unclear patch of freckles and lines that blur together along his left wrist. 

“Who needs chivalry?” Felix is on his feet, swiping furiously with a tree branch at thin air, still practicing his sword forms. “I’d want my soulmate to do things for me because he _wants_ to, not because of _chivalry_.”

Dimitri feels his face burn hot at those words, because he does always try to be kind to Felix, to do little things for him. Was that too chivalrous for his soulmate’s tastes? Was Dimitri not supposed to want to do those things?

“Ey, Fe,” Sylvain says, noticing Dimitri’s unease, “maybe watch what you say around your actual soulmate.”

Felix startles, dropping the branch.

“I-I only meant,” he hastens, backpedaling, “generally speaking, if someone’s only being nice because the Goddess says they’re s'posed to be nice…”

“It’s all right, Felix,” Dimitri says, getting to his feet. “I… need some air. Excuse me.”

And he gets up and leaves, ignoring the fact that they are, in fact, already outside. It’s less because he’s upset by Felix rejecting his politer instincts, and more because he, too, is suddenly full of doubts.

He’s starting to wonder if Felix would be with him, either, had the Goddess not mandated it so. 

There is no reason for him to think such blasphemous things, truly. It is the Goddess’s will, after all, that he and Felix be together, live their lives for one another, stay by one another’s side. And if it truly is the Goddess’s will — which it must be, based on the mark he and Felix share — how can he do anything but follow her plan joyfully?

Felix would be heartbroken to know that Dimitri is full of such doubts, or that he is not always so overjoyed as he ought to be. His father would be disappointed; the Goddess would finally turn her back on him for good.

And so, as with all things, he swallows his feelings down, pretending there will not come a day when he no longer can. 

—

Everything falls apart when they are thirteen.

The Tragedy of Duscur — the massacre Dimitri survived thanks only to Glenn’s efforts — has wrought changes in himself that Dimitri does not understand. That no one seems able to understand. 

That his soulmate, the love of his life, refuses to understand. 

Everything is a blur around Dimitri, who has only been lucid long enough to save one innocent Duscur boy from being massacred by Dimitri’s people. He and the boy — Dedue — are sent to live with Dimitri’s soulmate’s family, partly for Dimitri’s safety and partly because no one is left in his own house save for his uncle, who is in no condition to care for him. Rodrigue welcomes Dimitri into his home as a replacement for the son he lost — something he makes no secret of, but it’s not as though Dimitri is in a place, either through circumstance or through emotional capability, to refuse him.

Rodrigue will be his father by marriage someday, after all. He may as well start getting used to the idea now. 

Ingrid is stoic upon hearing of Glenn’s death, even while the adults in her family despair around her. The Tragedy has taken Ingrid’s soulmate from her — but more than that, Ingrid has lost an entire future. There will be no second match for her; her marriage prospects — and her family’s by extension — have been forever ruined by Glenn’s death. No one will want her, matched to a dead man, her soulmark still burned black into her skin like a brand. 

“The most I can hope for now is to serve as a knight in your household,” she says, sounding far more mature than she had even a few months ago, when she speaks to Dimitri. “I… I only hope you can give me a chance, Your Highness.”

She bows, then, which Dimitri finds strange. Ingrid has never been so formal, before. But there has never been so much weighing on Dimitri before the death of his father, either. 

But while Ingrid takes her ruined future in stride, Felix is anything but stoic. His training efforts double, honing the major crest in his blood until no one can say he is not a worthy heir to House Fraldarius — until no one can doubt him for being the man he is. Rodrigue and the other knights of House Fraldarius had finally accepted him as their son about a year before Glenn’s death. Felix had even begun growing his hair out like Glenn’s, after cutting it so short throughout their childhoods, now that he was more assured that none close to him would misgender him. 

But more than his newfound obsession with training… Felix is _angry_. He’s always been temperamental, but he lashes out at servants, at Sylvain, at Ingrid, over the slightest of infractions or annoyances. 

But when it comes to Dimitri… Felix shuts down. His soulmate seems to look right through him, whenever they are in the same room. He never makes conversation, always turning away when Dimitri tries. And even though it feels like Dimitri has bigger problems — the weight of the crown, the neverending nightmares that follow him ever since witnessing the tragedy…

Well… it hurts, having his soulmate abandon him like this.

He wants to talk to Felix about Glenn. How patient he was with Dimitri whenever Dimitri would break a training sword. How he gave everything for Dimitri and for Faerghus, right to the end. How he can still hear Glenn’s voice whispering to him at night, urging Dimitri to get off his lazy ass and go avenge him, already. 

But Felix does not want to listen, and so Dimitri does not push. And they might have continued on in this silence indefinitely, had it not been for the rebellion two years after the Tragedy. 

Rebellions have become unfortunately common since Dimitri’s father’s murder, with certain nobles seeing Rufus as a weak ruler and Dimitri himself as too wounded to ever rule effectively. Perhaps they are right on both counts.

The thought that he has failed his people, even at the tender age of fifteen, leads Dimitri to join the battle himself, to prove their assumptions wrong. He acts as squire for Rodrigue, while Felix squires for House Fraldarius’s captain of the guard. The two of them are never far apart during the battle, relying on years of familiarity to keep them operating as a team.

Perhaps that is the problem. Perhaps the lack of distance between the two of them has always, fundamentally, been the problem. 

The battle itself is a bloody smear in Dimitri’s memory: no clear details remain but the image of his lance, raised against the sky and dripping scarlet. But one thing he remembers: Felix was wounded, at some point, an enemy’s arrow piercing his chest. 

Dimitri finds him a few days later in the training grounds at Castle Fraldarius, as per usual. He has live steel in his hand, moving through sword forms as though on autopilot, before he notices Dimitri staring at him.

“What do you want?” He is more curt than usual, turning away from Dimitri almost immediately. “I’m busy. I can’t have you interrupting me.”

Dimitri takes a deep breath.

“You’ll reopen your wounds, training like that,” he says, for lack of anything else to say. Felix snorts.

“Nice of you to care,” he says, looking down to examine his sword. While the wound he received in battle was not serious, Felix had taken it upon himself to ask the barber-surgeon to perform additional cuts, to finally remove the breasts he’d always hated binding. Rodrigue has been miffed that Felix had volunteered for such a surgery without his knowledge or consent, but Felix has stopped caring about his father’s opinion — or, really, anything but the steel in his hand — long ago.

“Of course I care,” says Dimitri, annoyed. “You’re my—”

“Your what?” Felix all but sneers. “Your _soulmate_?” The coldness of the word stops Dimitri in his tracks. 

“I was going to say ‘friend’.” It comes out weaker than he’d wanted it to.

Felix looks up at him then, and Dimitri is taken aback by the venom in his gaze.

“Maybe I don’t want to be that right now, either.”

Dimitri can’t help the way he flinches at the hateful words hurled at him by his true love. But before he can ask what he’s done to deserve such vitriol… Felix tells him.

“Putting down that rebellion,” Felix grumbles, slashing his sword through the air, wincing in pain as he does so. “I’ve always known you were a strong warrior, but the way you fought those… those _farmers_ …” He clenches his teeth. “No human being is capable of doing what you did. Certainly no _king_.”

Dimitri racks his memory, trying to think of a specific incident from that battle that Felix might be referencing — but his memory is still full of holes, he’s been living on autopilot for nearly two years now, and nothing comes to him. He clasps his hands, twisting his fingers together.

“I… I know I still have much to learn about being a good king—”

“Save it!” Felix’s face is inches from his now, hissing with fury. “You think I care about your… your chivalric ideals? They’ve always been bullshit to begin with, and _you can’t even stick to them!_ You throw them away with both hands as soon as it’s convenient! Who are you, Dimitri? Who the fuck are you?!”

Dimitri finds himself without an answer. Felix backs away from him, breathing heavily.

“You’re nothing but a beast,” he snarls. “A wild boar with a broken crown, hiding behind a human face, thinking you have everyone fooled. But I know you now, boar. You can’t hide from me any longer.” He laughs hollowly. “And the worst part of it is,” Felix continues, his voice rising somewhat hysterically, “even after watching my brother get torn for pieces for you, I’m still asked to spend my life with you, to marry you, to _fuck_ you, all because of some fucking birthmark I never wanted.” He pauses, shaking his head. 

“I’ll be asked to die for you too, one day.”

“No,” Dimitri says, his chest tight with panic, unable to fully process half of what Felix is saying. “I’d never ask you to… Felix, I don’t want you to die for me—!”

“It doesn’t matter what you want.” Felix glares at him, and Dimitri notices for the first time that his eyes are swimming with tears. “It doesn’t matter what I want, either. All I can do is train, so I can put that day off for as long as possible.”

He lifts his sword, wincing in pain as he does so. Dimitri takes half a step forward out of concern, but…

“Get out.” Felix sounds drained, his voice thick with unshed tears. “I don’t want to look at you anymore.”

There is blood spotting Felix’s chest, soaking through the bandages and his tunic — but Dimitri knows better than to argue with Felix when he’s like this. Especially when he’s finally been honest with Dimitri about how he feels, for the first time in years.

And so he leaves. 

He runs into Sylvain on the way out, not making eye contact with him as he asks his old friend to please see Felix to the infirmary. “Don’t tell him I sent you,” he adds, “please.”

If Felix wants to be left alone, the least Dimitri can do is indulge him. No matter how alone it leaves him. 

—

Things do not improve between them.

The best Dimitri supposes he can say is that things do not worsen further. He gives Felix a wide berth, refraining from the normal affectionate interactions he would do for him when they were children — helping him brush his hair, or bringing him small practical gifts from the market. They reside at the same manor, continue taking their meals with Rodrigue, often train together… but whatever friendship they might have had has been put indefinitely on hold. Let alone any romance that might have developed, given time.

Felix will not give him the love he longs for, not even with the Goddess Herself mandating him to. And because Dimitri has been marked as Felix’s, no one else will dare to, either. Not that Dimitri would ever dare ask anyone to commit such a mortal sin as loving him. 

It is at this point in his life that Dimitri enters Garreg Mach Monastery.

—

It feels good to be here, away from Felix’s childhood home. It feels good to have a purpose again. 

Felix comes with him to the Officers Academy, along with Dedue, Ingrid and Sylvain; but there are new friends to meet, too. Ashe, shy but kind. Annette, energetic and hardworking . Mercedes, nurturing but ditzy. Marianne, retreating but gentle. Edelgard, ambitious yet haunted.

And then there is Claude von Riegan. 

Dimitri can’t say his first impression of Claude is a particularly positive one. He meets the Leicester Alliance’s new heir just hours before they are taken out for a training exercise along with Edelgard before being ambushed by bandits, and Claude…

Well… runs away.

“It was a strategic retreat!” he protests when both Edelgard and Dimitri confront him later, angry. “I was trying to draw them off of you two, but then you ruined it by _following me…”_

“Argue all you like, Claude,” Edelgard snaps, waving her arm to silence him, “but there’s no excuse for such cowardly behavior.”

Dimitri doesn’t miss the divot that appears between Claude’s eyebrows, the flash of anger that appears in his eyes for just a moment before his face visibly relaxes back into his usual cocky smile.

“Please forgive me in that case, Princess,” he says, giving a bow that might or might not be mocking Edelgard. “I’ll be sure to stand my ground the next time some maniac is coming at me with an axe.”

And that appears to be the end of it. But as they head back to the monastery the following morning, Claude comes to walk beside Dimitri. 

“Say, Your Princeliness,” he says, and Dimitri starts at the odd nickname. “You seemed to hold your own pretty well out there. Mind giving me a few pointers someday?”

Dimitri blinks. 

“Very well.”

—

This is how it starts.

—

They spar for the first time only a few days later, using wooden practice swords in the knights’ hall. Though Dimitri prefers lances, he is familiar enough with the sword thanks to the training he completed under House Fraldarius, and he raises his weapon, ready to better get the measure of Claude. 

But the moment he swings his practice sword in the other house leader’s direction — Claude immediately somersaults out of the way, not bothering to raise his own sword at all. 

And it continues like that for some minutes. Claude is nimble, and flexible: He jumps backwards, backflips away from Dimitri’s sword, runs from one end of the battlegrounds to the other, but does not even attempt to land a hit on Dimitri. He is not running away, precisely… He never turns his back on Dimitri, always keeping an eye focused on him as he darts around their makeshift battlefield. But he is apparently calculating the best way to avoid Dimitri, rather than face him head-on in a fair fight.

“Would you — just — hold still!” Dimitri grunts after chasing after Claude for several minutes. He is out of breath, and he fights the urge to double over to catch it. “You told me — that you wished to _learn_. What do you hope to accomplish by darting around like a mayfly, aside from exhausting your opponent?”

Claude eyes him, also breathing hard, though he grins.

“Maybe — that’s exactly what I want to accomplish,” he says with a wink, wiping the sweat from his forehead. “Tends to work for me, anyway.”

Dimitri scowls. 

“And in battle?” he demands. “I know you tend to fight from a distance, Claude. But what would happen if you were cornered, with no way out?” He takes a step closer, eye to eye with Claude. “What do you hope to do when you can no longer keep running?”

He sees Claude’s throat bob, blinking at Dimitri, apparently caught off-guard by the question. This close to Claude, he can see the brilliant shade of green of his eyes, take in the faint dusting of freckles across his nose.

“If I’m out of places to run,” Claude says eventually, “then that means I’ve already lost.”

He offers up a smile, but it’s painful, and brittle. Dimitri notices it, and frowns. 

“Then with your back against the wall,” he demands, “you would simply lay down and die?”

Claude does not answer, his expression shuttered. Dimitri sighs.

“You cannot plan for every eventuality, Claude,” he tells him, and sees surprise flicker across Claude’s face. “There are some times you must fight for your very survival, even against impossible odds.”

He turns as if to go — but just as quickly, turns back around, raising his practice sword to bring it back on Claude’s head —

And Claude raises his own sword to block it.

Claude does not flinch as their wooden blades meet, though he has instinctively brought his free hand up to grip the end of the “blade”, wrapping his hand around what would be live steel on a real sword. Nevertheless, he has resisted Dimitri’s surprise attack, and Dimitri lets himself smile.

“Good,” he commends Claude, though he does frown at the other man’s form. “Although, if you hold your sword thusly in a true battle, you’ll soon have other troubles to contend with.”

He withdraws his sword, and Claude laughs lightly, letting go of his sword’s blade and shaking out his arms, still gripping the hilt. 

“Bad instincts when it comes to swordplay, I’m afraid,” he admits. “I’m more used to fighting with a bow, or even an axe. But my grandfather wants me to learn better swordplay, so.” He gamely raises his sword. “Again?”

Dimitri moves to attack him again, though less forcefully this time. This time, Claude blocks him in more of a true parry, though his form is still clumsy. Dimitri takes the time to correct his form to better help build muscle memory, and then attacks again. And again. And again. Their wooden swords clack together, the sound echoing through the deserted knights’ hall as the night goes on. 

They have both discarded their jackets to fight in shirtsleeves, and thus Dimitri can also clearly see the manifested soulmark on the inside of Claude’s left arm: the swoop of a crescent moon curving protectively around a small, dark heart shape. Most people in Faerghus will keep their marks covered by wristbands or sleeves, and it is considered rude to stare at someone else’s mark uninvited… but he finds himself eyeing Claude’s nonetheless as they work through the drill together. 

He cannot identify the way it makes him feel to see Claude’s mark uncovered, to see it waver on his skin as his arm moves with his sword.

He chooses to bring it up later, as he and Claude sit for tea later that afternoon in the gazebo.

“I see you’ve already found your soulmate,” Dimitri says after several minutes of polite conversation, prompting Claude to raise his eyebrows behind his teacup.

“Yeah,” he admits, setting it back down on the saucer. “Hilda. You couldn’t tell?”

Looking back, Dimitri supposes it’s obvious. They have only been at Garreg Mach for a few weeks, but he’s already noticed how close Hilda and Claude are. The pair are rarely seen apart, heads often tucked together as they whisper in a corner of the dining hall, or laughing at some joke as they walk together, arm in arm, through the grounds. He should have already assumed that they are fated to one another, bound by the hand of the Goddess Herself. 

“I…” Dimitri stops, his voice unaccountably strained. “I hope you two will find happiness together.”

“We get by.” Claude’s tone is bright, the way it gets when Claude shares his half-truths. “What about you and your soulmate?” Dimitri looks up in surprise, and Claude shrugs, apologetic. “Saw your mark in the sauna. It’s lovely.”

Dimitri moves a hand to his left wrist, unconscious, to grip his soulmark, press his thumb against it. 

“Yes,” he says softly. He remembers thinking so too, years ago. “It— Felix. We have been betrothed for some time. He and I will wed, when we have both come of age.”

Men of Faerghus are typically considered ‘of age’ at the age of twenty, although can be married sooner if both parties wish it. Dimitri’s parents had met at the academy, just about his age, getting married the day after graduation from Garreg Mach. He thinks of himself and Felix living up to their example, and finds he cannot so much as picture it. 

“Well.” Claude’s smile is warm, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Mazel.”

Dimitri nods, gripping his teacup in his hands, unsure what else to say. “Yes.”

They drink their tea in silence.

—

They build something of a routine as the weeks progress. On their free days, in the early afternoons, Dimitri continues giving Claude lessons in swordplay, though they are rarely alone in the yard as they were on that first occasion. And afterward, they take tea together in the gazebo, splitting a pot of chamomile as they get better acquainted.

Claude is… 

He’s funny, as Dimitri learns during their first teatime. The two of them spy on a pair of classmates across the gazebo, clearly on a first date, while Claude voices their dialogue under his breath. He hides his mouth behind his hand as he hisses “ _I daresay, this has been a_ perfect _teatime, Mildred_ ” and “ _Why, Reginald, I do feel drawn into conversation with you._ ” It’s never mean-spirited, and Dimitri finds it difficult not to laugh aloud at his commentary, hiding his snickers behind one gauntleted hand. 

He’s unexpectedly kind, too. He always makes sure Dimitri gets healing after their sparring sessions, and Dimitri often sees him helping Raphael and Leonie carry heavy loads back from the market, or include Marianne in group conversations, or commend Ignatz on his art pieces. In a strange way, it makes Dimitri aware of his own shortcomings as house leader, the distance he maintains between himself and the rest of his house.

But Dimitri doesn’t think he’s ever met someone who talks so much, yet says so little. Not in the sense that Claude is unintelligent — far from it; he may well be the most intelligent person Dimitri has ever met — but he appears to have developed the same sort of artful dodges he uses in battle when it comes to questions about his family, his home life, what he was doing before coming to the Leicester Alliance last year. Still, he never outright shuts Dimitri down, and so he keeps inquiring. 

Dimitri has the sense that, in time, he might be able to consider Claude a true friend. And perhaps that is all it would have been — a cordial friendliness between two of Fodlan’s future rulers — had it not been for that night on the roof.

—

It is unseasonably warm that evening, even for Blue Sea Moon. Dimitri keeps hearing about the monastery’s “cool mountain air,” but as someone raised in the land of frozen earth and snowy tundras, Dimitri is somewhat more sensitive to the heat that pervades the monastery. The warm air stagnates in the stone confines of his bedroom, even with the windows flung open as wide as he dares.

And so that evening, Dimitri takes his pillow and his thinnest blanket, to keep off the wind, up to the dormitory roof, with the slightly desperate thought that so long as he can feel a breeze on his face, he might finally be able to get some proper sleep. 

He hauls his body out his bedroom window, clambering onto the roof and crawling to a spot with a more even keel so he can make himself more comfortable. Dimitri tends to sleep like the dead, so he’s less afraid of falling off than he is of someone finding him up here in the morning. Or worse, causing his friends unnecessary panic when morning comes and they cannot find him in his room. 

But no sooner has Dimitri fully landed on the roof, pillow and blanket in hand, than he realizes he isn’t the only student who had this idea.

Sitting against a nearby chimney, his knees drawn to his chest, is Claude. He doesn’t appear to have noticed Dimitri yet, his face turned upward to the sky, but then Dimitri makes a noise and Claude jumps, his hand leaping to his hip out of apparent instinct.

“Shit—! I…” He pauses, blinking in the darkness. “Dimitri?”

There’s something unguarded about the way he says Dimitri’s name, especially considering he rarely uses it. He tends to lean on ridiculous nicknames meant to catch Dimitri off-guard, or perhaps to chip away the ice Dimitri knows he keeps around himself. 

Dimitri, too, is so startled to find Claude up here that he nearly backtracks, nearly goes back to toss and turn in his sweltering room once again.

“Claude,” he stammers, keeping his voice low, “I… I apologize. I did not expect to find anyone up here.”

Claude blinks, shaking his head as he moves his hand away from his hip. “It’s… it’s fine.” He takes in the sight of Dimitri, eyes drifting down to the bedding he holds in his hands. “Are you… trying to sleep on the roof?”

Dimitri nods, thankful that the darkness hides his shameful blush. “It is too warm in my room,” he says, knowing how pathetic it sounds. “I… I have done it before. But I will go, if you would prefer privacy.”

Claude shakes his head, still sitting slumped against the squat chimney. “Nah,” he says softly. “You can stay.”

Silence falls between them as Dimitri moves slightly toward the apex of the roof, while Claude looks absently back at the sky. Curiosity eventually gets the better of Dimitri.

“You didn’t say what you were doing up here.”

A half-smile creeps onto Claude’s face.

“Come here, and I’ll show you what I’m doing.”

He moves over slightly, and Dimitri only hesitates a moment before crawling along the roof to sit beside him. He rests with his back against the chimney. He can feel Claude’s warmth at his side. 

“Sometimes, when my head gets too full,” Claude tells him after a moment’s thoughtful pause, “I come up here to look at the stars. They’re so bright, and so far away… It makes me and my dreams feel so small.”

His voice is hopeful, rather than maudlin. Dimitri glances over at Claude. 

“Small enough to be able to reach, you mean,” he offers. Claude turns to him, offering a tired smile.

“Exactly.” He returns his gaze above him, taking a deep breath of cool night air. “Sometimes it’s… overwhelming, thinking I might not live to see the world I dream of. Coming up here, looking at the stars…” He shifts beside Dimitri. “Remembering they’re the same everywhere. It’s… comforting.”

He shivers a little then, a cool evening breeze blowing past them. Dimitri is not cold, but he reaches for his blanket regardless, pulling it across both their laps. Claude gives him a grateful, if surprised, look. 

“What do you dream of, Claude?” Dimitri cannot help but ask. He’s gotten to know Claude somewhat, these past few months, and so knows enough to realize that unguarded moments like this one are incredibly few and far between. 

Claude licks his lips before answering.

“A world where… where no one is ever persecuted for being different,” he says slowly. “Where people’s differences are embraced, and not used against them. Where no one will have to be an outsider, because there won’t be an _outside_. It’ll all just be…” He lifts his hand, letting it fall to his side. “That probably sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”

“Not at all.” Dimitri thinks about the way people at Garreg Mach and in Faerghus treat Dedue, look upon him with immediate suspicion or take no effort to get to know him, all because of the darkness of his skin marking him as someone from Duscur. Thinks, also, of the cruel whispers he hears about Claude. Of the way he’d reacted when Edelgard had called him a coward. 

“It’s a beautiful dream,” he tells Claude sincerely. “A far better world than the one we live in now. Perhaps we can work together so that it might come to fruition.”

In the faint light of the crescent moon, he can see Claude’s eyes widen in genuine surprise, his lips parting slightly.

“You…” He closes his mouth, shaking his head. “You better be careful, Prince Charming. Don’t go making promises to a guy that you can’t keep.”

“I’m not,” Dimitri insists. “I… have often thought similarly to you. The fact that anyone has to suffer for something that is out of their control… It is unjust. When I become king, I hope to bring change to Faerghus that helps the impoverished, the orphaned, the survivors of the Duscur massacre. I…” He clenches his fist in front of him. “What good is the power I will have, if I do not use it to help the ones who need me most?”

Like his loved ones. The ghosts who still whisper in his ear, begging him for help. 

Claude inhales sharply beside him, as though he is about to say something— but then he exhales, as though thinking better of it.

“That’s… surprising,” he admits. “No, I take it back. It’s very like you. I just never expected to hear a noble say it.” He moves slowly, then leans his head on Dimitri’s shoulder. “When we’ve graduated, maybe…” He hears Claude yawn. “Maybe we can both make our dreams come true.”

Dimitri closes his eyes for a moment, savoring the warmth of Claude at his side. It does not feel oppressive or stifling like the heat in his bedroom; rather, it is grounding. Solid. It reminds him that he is still here, still breathing. 

He cannot remember the last time another person stayed this close to him, comfortable enough with Dimitri to rest their head on his shoulder. Dimitri thinks it must have been years — not since he and Felix were children.

“I’d like that,” he tells Claude softly. Claude hums softly, sleepily, the cold tip of his nose rubbing against Dimitri’s shoulder through his sleep shirt. 

Dimitri does not remember falling asleep that night; but he remembers the deep, steady sound of Claude breathing in the darkness, his hair tickling Dimitri’s cheek and his arm warm against Dimitri’s. 

He does not think he will ever forget this moment of total peace at another person’s side. 

—

They continue.

They never meet on the roof again, but they continue spending their off days together, sparring and having conversations over tea. And it is not long before Dimitri’s days with Claude become a highlight of his time at Garreg Mach. 

He doesn’t know what it is. Perhaps it is the fact that no one expects him to guide Claude, the way he is asked to lead his classmates, and thus his choice to train Claude feels like a freedom, and not an obligation. Perhaps it is the novelty of sparring with someone new, or having someone new to discuss history and strategy over tea with. 

Or perhaps it is Claude himself. There is something of a magnetic quality to him, something that makes Dimitri’s eyes continually seek him out even on days they have no plans to meet. Something that makes his mind wander to Claude when Dimitri sits in lecture, wondering if Claude is as restless and bored sitting in the classroom as Dimitri is. Something that makes Dimitri think back on little moments from their free afternoons together, things that would pass unnoticed were he with anyone else, like the way Claude had smiled when Dimitri had complimented his form, or the way he’d laughed at one of Dimitri’s anecdotes about Sylvain. The way he’d looked at Dimitri up on the roof that night, open and unguarded. 

Dimitri will think about all these things about Claude, and smile to himself. 

He is… fond, of Claude. He can admit that much to himself, after so many months choosing to spend time with him. But there is something gut-twisting about feeling this way about Claude, about daydreaming about the way his fingers grip a bowstring or revisiting the memory of the way he’d smiled at Dimitri under starlight. It creates a tremendous pit of guilt in his stomach, especially since he can’t remember the last time he spent alone with his actual soulmate.

Dimitri has thought he might be a bad person before. But the thought that spending time alone with Claude is, itself, what makes him a bad person… Somehow, that thought is worse than any verbal abuse Felix could hurl at him. 

And so he ends up seeking out Felix one evening, to share with him everything that has transpired. Felix, incredibly, agrees to sit and eat with him, especially once they find out the dining hall is serving one of their favorites. Conversation between them is actually… pleasant, for once, as they talk of their training regimens, offering suggestions for particular roadblocks they both keep running into. It reminds Dimitri of the way things used to be, before the Tragedy, before everything became so fraught. 

“I’ve been training fairly often with Claude lately,” he eventually offers, as Felix takes a mouthful of Gautier gratin.

“Riegan?” Felix swallows. “I know. I’ve seen you.” His tone is frustratingly neutral. “Looks like you at least taught him how to hold a sword properly. Good work there.”

“I—” Dimitri opens his mouth, then shuts it. Felix puts his fork down, frowning at Dimitri’s nervousness. “W-we also… have tea together,” he eventually says. “Sometimes.”

He does not dare mention the night on the roof, even if nothing terrible had transpired. It feels too… personal to share with Felix somehow. And truthfully, Dimitri does not quite understand why it’s so important for him to tell Felix about any of this. It only matters that… that whatever he and Claude are doing, it is not a secret. 

Felix is staring at him like he’s sprouted a third eye.

“Okay.” He shakes his head. “Why would you bother telling me that?”

Dimitri dares to look at him then, his heart lightening.

“You… do not mind?”

Felix scoffs.

“I don’t own you, boar.” The nickname no longer stings as it once did, the pain having dulled over years of its use. “I could give a damn who you spend your time with.”

Dimitri cannot help the smile that comes over his face at his soulmate’s approval. Cannot keep himself from ducking around the table to wrap Felix in a tight embrace, the way he used to when he was a child. 

“Thank you, Felix.” He draws back to look at Felix, who seems more confused and annoyed than angry with him. “I do only want you to be happy with me. I hope you know that.”

“You can start by not acting so weird.” Felix shakes his head. “Now eat. Your food’s getting cold.” Dimitri obeys, returning to his seat and tucking in with a smile on his face. 

His soulmate knows, and approves. 

Perhaps now he can go back to enjoying his time with Claude without feeling as though he is committing some great sin. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claude grapples with his feelings, gets into an ill-advised sword fight, and battles some psychological demons.

Claude von Riegan meets his soulmate when he is sixteen.

It is not under the most ideal of circumstances. He is caught at the border between Fodlan and Almyra as he runs away from home, and is brought before House Goneril’s general to answer for trespassing. He is not worried. He bears a letter with House Riegan’s official seal explaining who he is, and he bears the crest of Riegan should anyone doubt his identity. He expects to be questioned briefly by Holst Goneril before being sent on his merry way.

Claude does not expect Holst to be accompanied by his younger sister, or for her to cry out sharply in pain as soon as their eyes meet. He does not expect to feel a sharp pain at his own wrist, like a jolt of lightning, as the blur of freckles that have always been there suddenly manifest into a clear marking.

The girl, now staring at him with wide, apprehensive eyes, holds tightly to her wrist as they look at one another. Claude, for how little he cared about ever meeting his soulmate, can’t help but be hurt by her reaction. 

At least, until they get a moment alone to talk.

“Look, no offense,” Hilda tells him as they sit for tea, reaching across the table to nab a chocolate tea cake, “but you’re not at all who I pictured my soulmate to be.” 

And there’s absolutely nothing Claude can say to that. Nothing but he can do but bow his head, obscuring his face behind his teacup. 

“Sorry to disappoint.”

Hilda gasps. “Oh, no, it’s not…!” She waves vaguely at Claude across the table. “I’d just— always hoped my soulmate would be a girl, that’s all. I’m only attracted to women, so…” She raises her hands in a helpless little shrug. “I’m sure you’re very nice, and all! But I really don’t want to marry you.”

Claude can’t help but scoff, choking on the crumbs of his shortbread as he does so.

“ _Marry_ me?” he coughs, reaching for his teacup. _I don’t even know you_ , he thinks, but does not say. “Skies above! Who’s talking about marriage?” 

“My parents probably will.” Hilda’s mouth twists unhappily. “They’ve never really known what to do with me, what with Holst holding down the border on his own. If my mark hadn’t shown up in the next year or so, they probably would have matched me to the Gloucester boy down south. And, no offense to him,” she laughs drily, “but I’d rather die.”

Claude chuckles along with her, despite not knowing the boy she’s talking about. In all honesty, he’s still trying to get used to the idea that his soulmate’s rejection is not based around her hatred for something he is, the way everyone else’s rejection has been for most of his life. 

At least this time it’s based around his gender, rather than his heritage. And on Hilda’s preferences, rather than her prejudices.

“But I guess there’s nothing for it.” Hilda sighs. “We can’t exactly hide it, not when we matched in front of my brother. And, ugh, does that mean I have to be the Duchess of the Alliance someday? That sounds _terribly_ difficult—”

“Hilda,” Claude interrupts, and she looks at him with those bright, clever eyes. “Maybe we can use this situation to our advantage. Get what we both want.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Oh?” She takes a deep drink from her teacup. “Please, go on.”

And so Claude launches into a summation of the scheme he’s started cooking up in the five minutes since they sat down together. They’ll allow their match to go public, openly courting one another by the time Claude arrives at his family’s seat of power in Derdriu. He can keep Hilda from any unwelcome marriage prospects during her youth, while she can help further legitimize his position in the Leicester Alliance. He’s sure to make it clear to her that he has no intention of actually marrying her; the idea of marrying any stranger is abhorrent to him, just as she seems to find the idea of being any man’s wife distasteful. 

Hilda’s eyes glow with interest over the rim of her teacup.

“All right,” she says, pointing at him, “but we’ve got to talk our families into postponing the marriage contract proper until after we finish school. Tell them it’ll distract from our studies, or something. Otherwise it’ll be too hard to disentangle the paperwork, once we go our separate ways.” She takes a slow sip of tea while Claude blinks at her.

“That’s smart,” he says, acknowledging her with a nod. Hilda, incredibly, chokes on her tea.

“Smart?” she repeats, raising her eyebrows in some surprise. “Me?”

“Yeah.” Claude looks at her in some bemusement. “You mean to tell me no one’s complimented your scheming genius before?”

Hilda is flushed scarlet. “’Genius’ is a bit far,” she demurs. “I’ll do pretty much anything if it means avoiding hard work. Doesn’t take any special talent.” 

She hides her face behind her cup, still blushing. Claude already knows better than to mistake it for any sort of romantic interest; it must be, he deduces, simply that no one has ever noted Hilda’s brilliance before. Even if the only thing she uses it on is avoiding hard work. 

He smiles, reaching for another biscuit. Perhaps this can be a beneficial arrangement for them both, after all. 

—

Soulmates exist in Almyra, but they don’t have a tenth of the weight that they do in Fodlan. 

Claude’s parents are not soulmates, at least not according to any sort of birthmark. When he was young and still believed in love, he’d thought their story to be a grand sort of romance: two people from opposite sides of the border, falling in love without regard for their cultures or customs or any mandate from any sort of goddess.

Truthfully, he still thinks it a grander romance than any of the soulmate legends that are held in such esteem in Fodlan. But he’d lost any hope of finding a similar love for himself long ago, by now. Years of rejection, of taunts and slurs and hurled stones, have made Claude block off his heart, guarding it until the day people like him will finally be accepted on both sides of Fodlan’s Locket. 

Perhaps when the walls between his two homelands come down, he can let his own walls down, as well.

Still, Hilda is the closest he’s gotten to another person in years. He doesn’t dare tell her everything — seeing the way she speaks about other Almyrans would keep him from doing so even if his defenses weren’t quite so honed — but he finds himself seeking her out once they both arrive in Derdriu. He spends hours with her swapping stories over tea, laughing at one another’s jokes about the roundtable nobility, even talking about their hopes for their time at the academy. It should be strange, this immediate kinship he feels with her despite only knowing her a short time — but it doesn’t feel strange at all. 

It must be the fact that they’re soulmates, he thinks. There’s something about him and Hilda that just… clicks, in a way he hasn’t felt before. 

Not that he holds any romantic notions about their relationship, or ever did, really. Almyrans believe a soulmate is simply meant to be someone important to you in some way: perhaps a lover, but perhaps also a close friend, a trusted advisor, a loyal partner in battle or in business. Claude’s father’s soulmate is Nader, his closest lieutenant, who has been like a brother to him since they were young — and, by extension, the closest thing to an uncle Claude has ever had. His mother’s, meanwhile, is a woman named Judith von Daphnel, who Claude never had the chance to meet before coming to Derdriu, but who has starred in most of his mother’s most colorful stories from her youth in the Alliance. 

His parents’ experiences have taught him the myriad forms love can take — and what’s more, they have taught Claude to hold each of them with the respect and weight they deserve, whether that love is a romantic one or not. 

Claude supposes he can also count himself lucky that he finds himself in the Alliance, where soul matches are more of a loosely-held tradition than a strict divine commandment, as they are in the Kingdom and Empire. Only the more traditional houses like House Gloucester and (unfortunately) his own have put any real stock in soulmarks for the past several centuries. 

His grandfather is the one to seal this impulsive plan of his, insisting on the match with Hilda while simultaneously spitting on everything Claude has ever known or cared about the concept of soulmates.

“It’s fortunate that the Goddess saw fit to match you with a young woman of House Goneril.” Edgar von Riegan’s piercing emerald gaze, so like his mother’s and his own, dissects Claude on their first meeting, while Claude stands on the carpet of his study. “Perhaps She sees some value in our house, after all.”

Claude keeps a blithe smile on his face, hoping to appear naive in his grandfather’s eyes. “Perhaps, sir,” he agrees.

Edgar heaves a sigh, stamping his cane on the ground as he gets to his feet.

“Your mother,” he begins, and Claude is already bracing himself against what’s sure to be unpleasant words. “She disgraced us by turning away from her blessed match with the Daphnel heir, running off with that… that man you call your father. I can only thank the Goddess that you appear to have the sense that Leila lacks.” 

Claude’s blood is already boiling, though he’s careful not to let any of it show on his face. “I suppose the Goddess simply called me to be with Hilda,” he says. Anyone who knows Claude well would immediately recognize that he’s being facetious.

His grandfather does not know Claude well enough to spot the joke.

“Yes,” he says, and points a gnarled, shaking finger at Claude. “To atone for your mother’s mistakes. To send our house an heir with a proper match, which your poor uncle Godfrey never found. To secure our house’s future for the coming generation.” He sinks back into his seat with a sigh. “You must not disappoint me, boy. Be true to the Goneril girl, lest House Riegan suffer further for the hubris of turning our backs on Her Will.”

It only tracks, Claude thinks much later, that he would not end up having a say in who he marries, when both his parents were so freely able to choose one another. With the eyes of the Alliance now on Claude and Hilda, they have no choice but to keep up appearances that they are courting, at least until Claude takes over the dukedom from his grandfather and is finally able to act freely. Finally able to set aside the foolish notion of a soul match and begin enacting reforms that might finally destroy Fodlan’s Locket. Whether he marries at all is no concern of his.

But for the time being, there is no way for him to escape the impulsive offer he made to Hilda — even if neither of them wishes to follow through with any engagement, let alone marriage. 

But, Claude supposes, that’s a problem for future Claude to scheme his way out of.

—

His grandfather sends him to the Officers Academy at Garreg Mach, claiming it’ll make a true nobleman of him. And while the Almyran in Claude rebels at the thought of being turned into a “proper” Fodlan noble, the more pragmatic side of him knows it’s something he has to do, if he ever wishes to take the first step to making his dreams come true.

He cannot possibly hope to accomplish his dreams alone, after all. Perhaps here, at the academy, he can find someone with the gifts and desire to help him. 

Claude is almost immediately given a cadre of other Alliance nobles at his command, alongside a handful of talented commoners. And he gets to know them, taking care of them and getting to know their particular talents in the hopes that the bonds he builds now will serve him well in the future he hopes to build. 

Thanks to some measure of kismet, he just happens to be attending Garreg Mach the same year as the future leaders of the Empire and Kingdom — other possible allies in his pursuit of open borders and diplomacy between the nations of his mother and his father. Princess Edelgard is intense, focused, ambitious — and almost entirely unapproachable, thanks to both her demeanor and the forbidding aura given off by her loyal shadow, Hubert. Claude’s attempts to build a bridge with her are almost entirely lost, though he’s careful not to give either her or Hubert a reason to antagonize him. 

And the third in their little trio of future world leaders is, of course, Prince Dimitri of Faerghus. 

Dimitri is…

He’s passionate, almost to a fault. His devotion to his people often leads Dimitri to work himself ragged in the training grounds, with or without Claude at his side. He’s just a bit obsessive in general, which makes Claude keep insisting on treating him to tea after each of their lessons, taking the time to get to know Dimitri away from all the trappings of his rank, and to help him let go of the responsibilities that he clings, white-knuckled, to. 

He’s also haunted by something, Claude can tell. There’s trouble of some sort that lurks beneath that princely veneer, one that Claude desperately wants to get to the bottom of. Sometimes, when Dimitri doesn’t think Claude is looking, a dark shadow will fall across his face, though he’ll immediately deny it whenever Claude asks. The days when he’s able to coax a laugh or a smile from Dimitri end up being among Claude’s favorite days at the monastery, gathering each one to his chest and holding it there like a jewel. 

But in spite of whatever ghosts he’s surrounded by, Dimitri is also undeniably sweet. He’s considerate of Claude’s limits and clearly thoughtful, if reserved, toward his friends and his own soulmate, Felix Fraldarius. He is refreshingly unconcerned with status, talking of the reforms he wishes to put in place when he is finally able to take the throne and the downtrodden he wishes to help. 

And… Dimitri is beautiful. 

Claude has always noticed that Dimitri is good-looking, with piercing blue eyes that seem to look right through Claude’s carefully constructed armor. He’ll confess to ogling Dimitri’s chest and biceps when they train together, though he studiously refuses to let himself get a closer look in the sauna. But it isn’t until the night they meet on the roof of the dorm, looking at the stars and discussing their dreams, that Claude thinks he might have a problem.

Dimitri had told Claude that his dream was beautiful that night. That’s the word Claude will remember forever — _beautiful_. As though someone else can see the ugliness of prejudice that so pervades this world, dreaming alongside him of ridding the world of it. It’s the dream that Claude holds dearest to his heart, that has helped him fight through even the worst days, that he’s never dared to speak aloud to another soul in Fodlan. Not even Hilda.

“Perhaps we can work together so that your dream might come to fruition,” Dimitri had said, and Claude had let himself believe him. 

No one had ever so much as told Claude his dreams might be attainable, before. Let alone offered to help him reach them.

Dimitri had glowed that night, sitting with Claude under the stars. Letting Claude doze on his shoulder without a single word of complaint or protest. Claude has not dared to bring up that night up with Dimitri since, half afraid he’d dreamed it, or that Dimitri hadn’t been serious.

But that was the night that Claude’s carefully constructed walls gained their first crack.

That was the night Claude fell for Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd. 

—

Claude has already decided, by the time he realizes his feelings, not to act on them. 

After all, how can he? Hilda might neither be Claude’s fiancee nor the love of his life, but he’s hardly in a position to break off their farce of a courtship. He can’t simply abandon her, especially when there might well be nothing waiting for him on the other side.

His friendship with Hilda has only grown stronger during their time at Garreg Mach: they take most of their meals together, stay up late into the night talking in one of their rooms, and she’s his most frequent training and study partner. Hilda is more free with physical affection than Claude is, often linking her arm through his as they walk together or tightly embracing him even after a few hours of separation. The others at the school have noticed this, of course, surrounding Claude with whispers of a far different tone than the ones he’s used to. Murmurs of how strong their soul bond must be, strangers daydreaming aloud about the splendor of his and Hilda’s inevitable wedding. He finds it aggravating, of course — but he’s not in a position to correct them, not with his grandfather’s words ringing in his ears, and not with Fodlan refusing to see soulmates any other way than the one their Goddess apparently advocates. 

But more than that… more than Claude’s responsibility to Hilda, more than his house’s honor apparently being staked on their successful courtship — Dimitri is engaged to someone else. He’s already in love with someone else. He speaks of Felix, on the rare occasions his name comes up, with an insistent sort of devotion to someone he’s been matched to since infancy. Dimitri’s heart is already Felix’s, and so can never be Claude’s.

(Dimitri _does_ love Felix, right?)

But regardless. Claude’s realization that he might have a bit of a crush on Dimitri doesn’t prompt him to keep his distance. After all, he’s had crushes before, on far less admirable people than Dimitri. He’s not naive enough to mistake it for any kind of love. And so they carry on as always, with their free days spent together, Claude stockpiling moments for himself to look back on later. 

These moments of closeness, Claude thinks, of meager affection… they are enough. He needs nothing more from Dimitri than his companionship. Whatever emotional attachment he is forming won’t matter, not in the long run. 

And Claude continues to fool himself into thinking this is true, up until the day of the sword tournament. 

—

It’s early autumn, the weather slowly getting colder, and Claude and Dimitri have ended their usual Sunday training session early to watch the monthly sword tournament. Ignatz, the Golden Deer’s representative, has already been knocked out, which means Claude is mostly watching Felix decimate any challengers that come his way.

Watching Felix fight Petra now, Claude thinks he can see what Dimitri sees in Felix. Their soulmark aside, Felix is intense, focused. He moves with grace and strength, as fearful to face on the battlefield as he is in everyday life at the monastery. There’s a power to the way Felix moves that Claude can’t help but be intrigued by.

The latest battle ends, Petra collapsing to the ground as she tries to catch her breath, and their classmates whoop and applaud both their efforts. Felix turns to them, his eyes alight with a challenge. 

“Come on,” he says, gesturing to the onlookers even while drenched in sweat. “Anyone else willing to take me on?”

“I could, if you like,” Dimitri offers from the sidelines. He offers a smile that’s unlike any of the ones he’s shared with Claude, and his stomach twists. 

But Felix just scoffs, even as he helps Petra back to her feet.

“I’m sick of fighting you, boar,” he says dismissively. “It’s not a challenge to beat you anymore.”

That name — _boar_ — sounds like a nickname… And certainly if Felix had used a different tone, Claude might have brushed it off as an inside joke, or perhaps an affectionate term that’s just between soulmates. 

But instead, he spits it venomously, as though Dimitri is far beneath him, and it makes Claude’s hackles automatically go up. He can’t help but think of the names and taunts he used to endure as a child, back home in Almyra. But he knows from experience that getting visibly angry will not help him, will not help his reputation, and it will not help Dimitri. 

He turns to the prince. “Why does he call you that?” he asks quietly, hoping he sounds calm. 

“Ah…” Dimitri gives Claude a hesitant smile. “It’s a long story.” Claude opens his mouth to inquire further, but Dimitri shakes his head. “Please, do not trouble yourself by it.”

Dimitri may say that, but Claude’s already decided to trouble himself. Dimitri is well worth the trouble, as his friend. Never mind the other feelings that keep growing stronger, the more time he spends with Dimitri. 

Maybe that’s what makes Claude completely lose his mind, stepping into the ring to face the best swordfighter at Garreg Mach.

“Hey, Felix.” Felix turns toward him. “I’ll challenge you.”

Claude keeps an easy smile on his face, as though it’s simply part of the tournament. As though Felix isn’t the cause of that look on Dimitri’s face. 

Felix gives him a look of cool interest as the crowd murmurs with excitement around them.

“Interesting.” He looks askance at Dimitri. “Let’s see how well you’ve taught him, shall we, boar prince?”

It’s unfathomable to Claude that Dimitri does not share his anger at being addressed this way. “If Claude wins,” Dimitri merely replies from his place on the sidelines, his arms crossed, “it will be by his own merits, and nothing more.”

“Right.” Felix reaches back to tie his hair back up, holding the leather tie between his teeth. “Get ready then, Riegan.”

Claude does so, hefting the nearest practice sword and testing how its weight feels in his hand. He and Dimitri have been training diligently, yes, but Claude knows that in terms of sheer power and skill, Felix has him far beat when it comes to the sword. He’ll simply have to use all the other tools at his disposal if he hopes to win. 

And he _is_ determined to win. As to the reasons for why that’s so important… well, Claude can worry about them later.

They take position opposite one another, and then the tournament organizer whistles, indicating the start of the match. 

Claude has improved by leaps and bounds since his first spar with Dimitri. He’ll be honest: it’s still difficult to fight his instincts to run when faced with a fight, to try and plot his way out of whatever scrape he finds himself in. It’s difficult not to look on the battlefield, see the faces of his childhood tormentors in the face of every enemy, and not put as much distance between them and him as he can. 

But here and now, he stands his ground, parrying Felix’s first blow and dodging a second. It’s not at all like sparring with Dimitri. While Dimitri is slow and powerful, Felix is quick, his blade even more so, and relentless in his search for an opening. If Claude looks away even for a moment, he has no doubt Felix will take advantage of the weakness he sees and strike. 

It’s different to be on the receiving end of Felix’s drive, his competitiveness. Their blades flash, striking one another, and Claude is close enough, now, to get a better look at Felix. At the way his eyes narrow, glaring at Claude as though he’s a mere obstacle in his way. Claude moves in for a quick riposte, and in that moment Felix’s expression contorts with a rage that seems… disproportionate. As though that rage is always inside him, simmering, directionless, with nowhere to go but in spars like these. 

_What do you have to be angry about,_ he thinks with a sudden surge of emotion. _You’re the one who gets to be with him. You—_

His mind stalls out before he can complete the thought, completely taken aback by the strength of his own feelings. It leaves Felix just enough room to strike, his blunt wooden sword hitting Claude in the chest and knocking him a step back. 

“Yeah, Fe!” he faintly hears Sylvain cheer.

“Aw, c’mon, Claude!” Hilda calls, and the rest of the Golden Deer cheer with her. 

Claude is barely aware of them. Barely aware of the crowd, of the bruise blossoming on his ribs. All he knows is Felix before him — and Felix’s soulmate behind them, watching their every move. 

He launches forward with a furious flurry of attacks — completely without finesse, without his usual calculation, thinking only to take Felix off-guard. And as they fight, Felix blocking every blow of Claude’s, his traitorous mind keeps working, words of jealousy hissed into his ear.

 _You’re supposed to be the only one who loves him_ , he thinks furiously, feeling his face contort as he locks eyes with Felix. _You’re the only one he’ll_ allow _to love him. How dare you not even give him the time of day? Why—_

_Gods, why won’t he ever look at me the way he looks at you?_

Claude attempts to bring his sword down on Felix, but misses wildly, leaving Felix an opening to lash out at him. Felix’s blade strikes true once again, with such force that Claude staggers with an ugly gasp, nearly falling to his knees. But instinct, as it always does, causes him to change course at the last minute, instead falling forward to do a barrel roll that makes him land directly behind Felix.

In an instant, Claude throws out everything Dimitri and his grandfather have taught him about the chivalry of sword fighting; throws out every instinct in his bones telling him to run while Felix’s back is turned.

Instead, Claude lunges forward and loops his arms under both of Felix’s, forcing them to stand out at his sides. Claude locks his fingers together behind Felix’s head, holding him still even while his opponent struggles.

“Hey, what— what the fuck?”

Felix thrashes in Claude’s grip, but it’s no use; Claude holds him fast, doing his best to catch his breath as he does so. He’s achieved stalemate, somehow. Perhaps by a dirty trick — but now, at the very least, no one can say he’s lost to Felix.

Why it’s so important that he _not_ lose to Felix, Claude is still steadfastly ignoring. 

Still, judging from the looks his classmates are giving him right now, it might not have been worth it. 

“Just the kind of sneaky move you’d expect from Claude.”

“That must disqualify him, don’t you think?”

Felix gives one final surge, the top of his head butting Claude’s chin, and Claude releases him with a sharp cry of pain. Felix turns to face him, murder in his eyes and his hair loose around his face.

“What…” Felix spits into the dirt. “What on earth were you _doing_ , Riegan? That your idea of a fair fight?”

Claude licks his lips, tasting copper as he does so. 

“Y-you think your opponents in battle are going to respect the laws of a duel?” he says rather than give his real answer. “You’re going to have to be more prepared than that, Felix.”

Felix’s eyes continue to narrow in suspicion, the murmurs around them growing louder. But a hand seizes around Claude’s bicep before their conversation can continue.

“Come with me.”

It’s Dimitri, who starts to drag Claude out of the ring before waiting for an answer. Still, Claude walks with him willingly, letting his practice sword fall into the dirt.

Dimitri drags him outside of the training arena, releasing him at the foot of the stairs to the sauna.

“What were you thinking, Claude?”

Claude doesn’t dare look up at him. 

“I…”

“I’ve never seen you that angry before.” Dimitri grips his left wrist, perhaps unconsciously. “Did something happen between you and Felix?”

 _You did_ , Claude nearly says. _You happened._

Instead, he chooses to keep lying.

“Sorry,” he says, voice cracking as he tries to mold it into something more casual. “Guess I let you down out there after all.”

Dimitri tsks. 

“Felix has years of experience on you,” he says patiently. “The sword has been his whole life since we were four years old. Perhaps your sights were set a bit too high.”

“You have no idea,” Claude mutters. Dimitri frowns, peering into his face, and Claude freezes.

“You’re bleeding.”

“Huh?”

Before Claude can check for himself, Dimitri reaches out to touch the sore spot on Claude’s lip, where Felix’s head had struck. Dimitri is absent his usual gauntlets today, instead wearing thick leather gloves that Claude can all but taste as the prince touches his mouth, gentle and concerned. 

He finds he can hardly breathe.

“I—” He shivers, taking half a step back out of pure self-preservation. His heart is still hammering in his chest, making his bruised ribs ache all the more. “I-I’ll be fine. Apologize to Felix for me though, will you?”

Dimitri frowns, concerned. 

“Claude…”

“I’m fine,” he tells him again, flashing his usual cocky grin even though he knows the effect must be marred by his bloody lip, even though he feels none of his usual self-assuredness. Now that he’s taken one step back from Dimitri, he takes another, and another, trying to put distance between himself and the object of all his inconvenient feelings. “I’ll… I’ll ice it. See ya around, Your Princeliness.”

And he hurries off, ignoring the way Dimitri calls after him. Running away, as he always does, even if he finds he is quickly running out of places to escape to. 

—

“You really know how to pick ‘em, don’t you, Claude?”

He is sitting in Hilda’s room later that day, shirtless and disheveled, as Marianne goes over his bruises with faith magic. Hilda is crossing her arms, looking down at him. 

“I don’t know what you mean,” he says idly, wincing only slightly as he feels his body begin to mend itself under Marianne’s care.

“The way you went after Felix during that tournament, like he’d insulted your whole family.” Hilda yawns, unconcerned. “I called you and ‘His Princeliness’ ages ago, you know. You should be thankful I’m not calling to collect.”

Claude goes still at that, still and silent. Too aware of everything he’s just risked by his uncharacteristic impulsivity. Too aware of Marianne just inches from him, able to hear everything they’re saying.

“I think you’re reading too much into things,” he says blithely. “I overestimated my swordsmanship, that’s all.”

“Claude, are you really going to lie to me? Your soulmate?”

“Hilda,” Claude says sharply, a warning. Marianne pulls back to look at Hilda.

“Um… Hilda,” she says, tentative, and Hilda blinks, giving Marianne her full attention. “Claude needs rest to recover from his injuries. Please, leave him be.”

Hilda looks at Marianne a moment, and then nods with understanding. “Fine. Nothing but good ol’ TLC for our buddy Claude, then.”

Claude gives Marianne a grateful smile, and she ducks, blushing, before retreating from Hilda’s bedroom. Hilda watches her go, then turns back to Claude once the door has shut behind her.

“Ugh, put your shirt back on, would you? I’ll do your nails for you.”

Claude obeys, pulling his golden undershirt back over his head as Hilda reaches under her bed for her collection of nail polishes. He cannot help but touch his fat lip, which he hadn’t let Marianne heal. Cannot help but remember the earthy taste of Dimitri’s leather glove as he’d tenderly touched Claude’s mouth.

Skies above, he’s got to get over this.

With the two of them alone, he finally asks, in a small voice, the fear that’s been plaguing him all afternoon.

“Was I obvious?”

Hilda sits on her bed across from him, the rainbow of nail polishes between them.

“Only to me.” She pats his knee sympathetically. “Don’t make a habit of it, though. Jealousy’s a bad look for you.”

“Hah,” Claude says, helpless. _Jealousy_. To think he could be floored by something so… petty, and so pointless. Being jealous of Felix won’t change the situation he finds himself in. 

Hilda starts to work on Claude’s nails, carefully trimming and filing them, and a comfortable silence falls between them. Claude likes this about them, likes that they don’t always have the need to talk to feel close to one another. It’s been like this since shortly after they met: they would spend evenings in Derdriu’s library, Claude reading while Hilda fiddled with bits of wire and beads to make gorgeous accessories, their bond already such that they didn’t need to fill the space between them with pointless chatter. She’d made Claude an earring on one such night, a simple band of woven gold wires, and he wears it every day, not as a sign of his love for Hilda, but as a way to show her how much their friendship means to him.

He voices what he knows to be an absurd question, given their circumstances — but he says it regardless. 

“You don’t… mind, do you? That I…” He coughs, fighting a blush, still hesitant to show more emotion than he needs to. “That I… like him.” 

It’s the first time he’s voiced it aloud. It’s scary — he almost wants to take the words and put them back into his mouth, keeping them there until he dies. But he can trust Hilda not to mock his feelings, or to share them with people who haven’t earned them. 

“Mm…” Hilda tilts her head to one side, her gaze still focused on Claude’s cuticles. “I’m questioning your taste in men, yes. But it’d be way hypocritical for me to be mad that you like someone else, especially considering—”

She cuts herself off, abruptly biting her lip. Claude frowns at her.

“Considering?” he repeats, raising an eyebrow. “Meaning what?”

Hilda looks up at him, suddenly looking uncomfortable and guilty. It’s an echo of the look she gave him on their first meeting, when she didn’t know how to size him up. 

“Erm…” She fiddles with her bottles of nail polish, righting them in their box. Her eyes dart to her closed bedroom door. “So… You know Marianne.”

“Yeah…” Marianne often isolates herself from other students, despite Claude’s efforts to keep her included in house socials. Hilda is one of the few who’s been able to draw her out of her shell, often talking with her, spending time with Marianne outside of classes whenever she is not with Claude — and then something clicks. 

“You’re together?”

Hilda’s deep blush is his answer.

“I didn’t know how to tell you,” she says in an apologetic whine. “I know that we’re not…” She gestures vaguely between the two of them. “That you don’t love me and I’m not into you. But there’s not exactly a good way to tell your soulmate, ‘Hey, wanna meet my hot new girlfriend?’”

Claude actually chuckles at that, and Hilda visibly relaxes. 

“That’s fair,” he acknowledges. “I’m not hurt by it, just surprised.”

“Really?” Hilda looks at him, as though unsure whether to believe him or not. “You’re not, like… upset at all?”

“Of course not.” Claude shrugs. “You’re my best friend, Hilda. How can I be upset you’ve found someone you care about?” Hilda gives him a grateful, watery smile. 

“Best friend, huh?”

Claude grins back at her.

“And hey,” he continues, “you make Marianne happy. She doesn’t hide behind her bangs as much anymore.” 

“You think so?” Hilda sighs wistfully, a soft smile coming across her face that’s unlike any expression Claude’s seen from her before. “It’s… it’s so nice, being able to make her smile.”

“Yeah,” Claude says, unable to keep from thinking of Dimitri, the way Claude’s heart soars whenever the prince smiles at him.

“Making her laugh… Kissing her… Holding her when she has a nightmare…” Hilda cuts herself off. “Not that she and I have— anything—”

“I wouldn’t mind if you did,” Claude tells her honestly. 

“Gee, thanks,” Hilda says drily. “It’s more out of her comfort than yours, but hey, thanks for the permission.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know,” Hilda says with a sigh. “And yeah, yeah, people still think you and I are the model couple on campus, so. Mari and I’ll keep it discreet.”

It’s probably far easier for Hilda and Marianne to keep their romance quiet, Claude thinks with another stab of jealousy. The layperson might see the two girls walking together, holding hands, and simply — albeit incorrectly — think the two of them to be good friends. But there’s no way for him to hold Dimitri’s hand, even in private, without his intentions being glaringly obvious. 

“And I’ll keep your secret.” He reaches for her hand, giving it a squeeze. “Just like you’ve kept all of mine.” At least, all the ones he’s seen fit to share with her.

Hilda coos at him, launching across the bed to pull him into a tight hug.

“Thanks, Claude.” She pulls back, grinning at him. “Now. Time for you to pick a color.”

She shakes her box of nail polishes at him, and Claude chuckles before picking out a pale yellow for himself.

The color of his house, most will think — but if Claude looks at the ends of his fingers and daydreams instead about Dimitri’s cornsilk hair, at least no one will be the wiser. 

—

It does not get easier. 

The problem is, Claude cannot stay away. 

Friendship is enough for him, isn’t it? To simply have someone like Dimitri in his life, supporting his dreams and offering his unreserved kindness? Why does he have to be so greedy, longing for something that Dimitri has no power or interest in giving him?

He continues thinking so up to the days leading up to the Battle of the Eagle and Lion.

The houses have become more insular as the battle approaches, reverting to their original factions without much inter-house mingling as they plot and practice their battle strategy. Claude’s usual training sessions with Dimitri continue, though there is some expected amount of good-natured ribbing as they lightly trash-talk one another. But their time together outside of their lessons has been cut short, as Dimitri generally excuses himself to spend more time strategizing with his house members. And so it is unusual for Claude to look across the dining hall at the Blue Lions’ table and not see their leader among them. 

Come to think of it— has he seen Dimitri at all today?

He puts on a casual smile, crossing the hall to chat with them.

“Evening, Lions,” he says easily, halting their conversation. “Was hoping to catch a word with your illustrious leader. Any of you seen him?”

The seven of them simply stare at him in varying degrees of annoyance, a palpable hostility coming from them. A deer walking into a literal lions’ den, Claude thinks to himself, nearly letting himself laugh at the irony.

“His Highness is unwell,” Dedue finally tells him, earning glares from Ingrid and Felix. “I shall be taking dinner to him shortly.”

Claude frowns. 

“Dimitri’s sick?”

“Don’t take this as a sign that you’ll beat us in the Battle of the Eagle and Lion,” Felix says, getting to his feet to glare at Claude. “We’re strong enough to take all of you on, even without our prince.”

“Hey, easy, neighbor,” Claude says, raising his hands and taking a step back from his crush’s angry soulmate. Ever since their duel, Felix has been somewhat more hostile toward him than before — although that is, perhaps, a low bar to clear. “Sure, I want to win as badly as any of you, but I’m only interested if it’s a fair fight.”

Felix snorts. “A likely story.”

Claude ignores the last little dig, too busy fretting about Dimitri. If he were truly sick, Claude thinks, Dedue would surely be nursing him at his bedside, or Mercedes would be providing medicine for him. Based on the drawn expressions on Dimitri’s housemates’ faces, there must be something they aren’t telling him. 

He has to get in to investigate for himself. 

“Say, Dedue,” he says, turning to him. He’s always felt sympathetic toward Dedue and his circumstances, and he’s hoping that goodwill goes both ways. “You’ve had a lot on your plate recently. I can take Dimitri his dinner, if you like.”

It sets off the expected shitstorm — Dedue being unwilling to relinquish a duty he feels to be important, Ingrid and Ashe threatening him not to poison their house leader — and Claude keeps his smile pasted on throughout.

“It’s just that I’m already heading that way myself,” he says, stretching nonchalantly. “Been feeling kinda off — case of the dizzies — and thought I might head to bed early.” He looks Felix dead in the eye, and winks at him. “If I’m out of commission during the mock battle, that might give you all the edge.”

Felix’s eyes only narrow further, but Sylvain steps in with a massive yawn and a stretch.

“Ah, let him go ahead, Fe,” he says, slinging an arm around Felix’s shoulder and pulling him in close to his side. “He knows you’ll tear him to ribbons if he tries anything, right?”

Sylvain looks at Claude expectantly, apparently trying to bring him into the bit. Claude shrugs helplessly. 

“You all can believe me, or not,” he says casually, “but I’m heading back upstairs either way. Oooh, the dizziness. Bye!”

And he walks away from the conversation, though he stops by the buffet table on his way out, looking for things that might tempt Dimitri. He’s seen him enjoying onion gratin soup before, and there’s a ripe bunch of grapes that look promising. Claude grabs both, as well as a heel of bread, and sets them on a tray before setting off for the dorm.

Everyone is still downstairs enjoying their dinner, so it’s deathly quiet as Claude walks down the upper corridor to the stretch of hallway that houses his and Dimitri’s rooms. He finally reaches Dimitri’s bedroom, palms slightly and unaccountably sweaty as he knocks on the door.

“Go away,” comes a hoarse voice from inside. Claude raises his eyebrows.

“Dimitri?” he asks, knocking more gently this time. “Missed you at dinner. Thought I’d bring you something.”

There is silence, then some shuffling from inside before the door swings open.

“Claude?” 

Dimitri looks awful. Pale, wraith-like, dark circles under his eyes and a wool blanket from his bed draped around his shoulders. He’s also dressed in sleep clothes – which is odd, Claude thinks, as it’s too early for him to be dressed for bed. Or had Dimitri merely not gotten dressed at all today?

Shadowed eyes flick to the tray in Claude’s hands. “You are… kind, to bring something for me. However, I am afraid I haven’t the appetite for it today.”

“Not even for your nasty cheese soup?” Claude fakes a scandalized gasp. “You really are sick!”

He raises a hand to Dimitri’s forehead, finding it perfectly cool to the touch — and Dimitri waves his hand away. 

“I am not sick,” he says, sounding irritated. “And it’s _onion_ soup, not cheese— ugh. You may as well come in.”

He shuffles to the side, just far enough for Claude to enter the room. Dimitri’s room is neat as a pin and completely unadorned, giving no sign that someone actually lives here, and something in Claude’s chest pangs at the thought. 

He sets the bowl of onion gratin soup on Dimitri’s nightstand, turning to face him with a smile.

“I’d hate to have you feeling bad just days before our mock battle,” he says. “Have you seen a healer?”

Dimitri’s fingers clutch at the blanket around his shoulders.

“A healer will not help,” he mumbles. His eyes dart to one side of the room, and abruptly flinches as though someone is scolding him — which is odd, as Claude can hear no one’s voice, nor see anything in that corner that might upset Dimitri. “Thank you for your kindness. You may go now.”

Still, Claude doesn’t budge.

“I’m feeling pretty dizzy, you know,” he tells Dimitri cheerfully. “I don’t know if I can be trusted to walk back to my room alone, I’m so dizzy. So I hope you won’t mind if I sit here for a bit, wait for my head to clear.”

And he sits at Dimitri’s desk chair, still smiling blandly at him. Dimitri looks at him for a moment before dropping his gaze again.

“I am not ill,” he repeats, showing that famous stubbornness of his. “I simply…” He stops, mid-phrase, mouth agape before closing it. “I… have been plagued with nightmares, these past two nights, and I simply could not face the day. There, mock me all you like.”

Claude does not. Things are beginning to click for him in a way that makes his heart ache. 

“Doesn’t need to be a fever for you to be sick,” he tells Dimitri gently. He swallows, turning over in his mind what he knows about the horrors in Dimitri’s past, things that are common knowledge among the student body even if Dimitri has never told Claude of them himself. “But I can go, if you’d prefer to be alone.”

And he does get up then, turning toward the door, before he hears a small voice behind him.

“Stay.”

Claude turns back to see Dimitri still looking at a blank space on the wall, an expression on his face like that of a lost child. It is all Claude can do not to rush to him, gather him in his arms and keep him from ever looking that way again.

Instead, he comes to sit on the edge of the bed, a proper distance from Dimitri.

“We don’t have to talk, if you don’t want,” he tells Dimitri gently. “But will you eat something? I brought it here just for you.”

And Dimitri does. He skims the layer of cheese off the top of his bowl of cooling soup, chewing idly on the congealed mass, and manages about three grapes and a mouthful of bread before he turns green and pushes the rest away. Still, Claude does not push him to eat more, and instead chooses to fill the silence between them with chatter, not because he feels awkward, but in the hopes that it might distract Dimitri. So he talks about the great flocks of birds that have landed on the cathedral’s roof on their way to warmer climes for the winter, about the time he bested Raphael in wrestling, about the pranks he and Lysithea pull on Lorenz. The shadows do not quite leave Dimitri’s eyes the longer he goes on, his gaze still focused on a spot on the floor, but Claude can tell, by the way he keeps still, that he must be listening.

“—So then Hilda told Professor Hanneman—”

“What are your plans with Hilda?” It is the first thing Dimitri has said to him since they sat down together, and it stops Claude short.

“I… sorry?”

“After the academy.” Dimitri’s gaze fixes on his knees. “Will you wed? Will she become your consort? Bear your children?”

“I… okay, wow,” Claude says, shaking his head. His relationship with Hilda after graduation isn’t something he likes to think much about at the best of times, but he’s more concerned about what made Dimitri ask something so personal in the first place. “Where is this coming from?”

Dimitri is swaying faintly on the bed.

“Will she hold you when you have nightmares?” he asks, scarcely above a whisper. “Comfort you, when you find your responsibilities overwhelming?”

“Dimitri,” Claude says softly, moving closer to set his hand on his shoulder. “Did something happen with Felix?”

Dimitri laughs, hollow, and shakes his head.

“The Goddess tells us,” he recites, as though he does not fully believe it, “that when we find our soulmate, we shall never again be alone. I have known my soulmate for my entire life. So then why, Claude, do I always feel as though I am adrift, with nothing to anchor me?”

Claude can take no more, wrapping his arms around Dimitri like a protective cocoon, one hand atop his head as Dimitri presses his forehead into Claude’s shoulder. Claude can feel him shaking, although he is not sure if Dimitri is crying or not.

“I woke two days ago,” Dimitri whispers hoarsely, “from one of my usual nightmares. The heat from the flames that killed my family still warm on my face.” He turns his face toward Claude’s neck. “And my first thought was that I must not bother Felix with this same old story, because it angers him to hear of it.”

“Dimitri,” Claude says again, hushed, pulling him closer and tangling his hair in his fingers. He supposes he cannot blame Felix for wanting to avoid talk of his brother’s murder; but at the same time, the thought of Dimitri being so alone with such a heavy burden threatens to crush Claude alongside him. “You can tell me,” he says, blindly. “I’ll always listen.”

Dimitri says nothing more, but continues to snuffle, helplessly, into Claude’s chest for the next several minutes. His arms, curled tight to his chest, eventually unfurl as he rests a hand on Claude’s waist, shaking only a little, and Claude lets himself imprint the feeling into his memory even as he runs his free hand along Dimitri’s back. 

Eventually Dimitri quiets, slumping in Claude’s arms, his breathing deep and even, and Claude sends a silent thanks to the goddess he does not believe in.

He rearranges Dimitri on the bed, laying him out on the mattress, clearing the bits of food still left from Dimitri’s halfhearted attempts to eat and pulling the blanket over his sleeping form. Dimitri’s brow is still furrowed, even in sleep, the circles under his eyes evident now that Claude can see his face, and he lingers, looking at the prince, not wanting to leave him but fearing what might happen if he stays.

Dimitri stirs in his sleep, his hand leaving the safety of his blankets to search for something, and with one word makes the choice for him.

“Claude…”

Gods of Almyra help him.

“I’m here,” he says quietly, and shrugs off his jacket, setting it on the back of Dimitri’s desk chair. “Just—getting ready for bed.” He removes his boots as well before climbing into the bed between Dimitri and the wall, unable to keep his distance in such a narrow bed. They face one another, breath mingling, the furrow between Dimitri’s eyebrows smoothing out as he realizes Claude is still nearby.

Just for a short while, he tells himself, his gaze fixed on Dimitri’s face. Just until he’s assured that Dimitri has fallen asleep. Then he can…

—

He wakes up the next morning, still in Dimitri’s bed.

It takes him a moment to register that that’s where he is, his muscles cramped from spending the night squeezed in so narrow a bed with another person. As Claude slowly opens his eyes, early morning light filtering through Dimitri’s window, he catches sight of the prince laid out beside him, curled up and looking far too innocent. Pale eyelashes fluttering against his cheek, a fist tucked under his face, his expression utterly relaxed.

Claude has never seen Dimitri like this. Lying so peacefully, unconcerned that their knees and arms are touching. He’s distracted from waking up more fully by the warmth of Dimitri’s breath on his face, the way little puffs of breath exit parted pink lips. 

Claude nearly falls asleep again, soothed by the utter peacefulness of it all. The easy intimacy he wishes they could have when Dimitri is awake.

And it is that thought, more than the light coming from the window or the sounds coming from the rooms on either side of them, that returns Claude to his senses, adrenaline jolting him awake.

“Fuck,” Claude mutters to himself, sitting up and rubbing at his eyes. At his side, Dimitri stirs, apparently distressed at the loss of Claude’s warmth. Felix and Sylvain are awake in the rooms around Dimitri’s, with more Lions undoubtedly prowling in the hallway. Gods, how could he have been so careless, spending the whole night here without a thought for the consequences?

Claude buries his face in his hands for one brief moment.

“Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ …”

He all but leaps out of bed, tripping over Dimitri’s legs, shoving his feet back into his boots and throwing his jacket on, unbuttoned. Leaving Dimitri’s room the way he came in is unthinkable — to have people catch him leaving the Crown Prince of Faerghus’s bedroom in the early hours of the morning is almost worse than them being caught in bed together, even if nothing scandalous had happened. Which leaves Claude only one real escape route. 

He turns on his heel, making a beeline for the window. The fact that Dimitri keeps his ledges bare makes it easy to climb up and unlatch the window, and Claude hovers atop the windowsill like some kind of ridiculous, oversized canary. 

He lets himself turn back and look at Dimitri, mumbling incoherently in his sleep, his arms having found an armful of blankets that he hugs to his chest. For a moment he wants to turn back, at least wake Dimitri up enough for him to let him know why he’s waking up alone.

But then there is a sharp knock at Dimitri’s door, and Claude returns to his senses. He manages to haul himself back up to the roof just in time, walking quietly over the stretch of roof that covers Felix’s room. He leans against the chimney to catch his breath, praying no one happens to look up and see him up here in the dawn’s shadows. 

How… how could he have been so careless? So selfish, as to let himself indulge in the fantasy that Dimitri wants him? To care for him during a difficult time is certainly one thing — something that Claude might have done for any friend. But spending the night with Dimitri? Getting that much closer to a man it is dangerous for him to care so deeply for? Lying in bed beside him, listening to the cadence of his breathing and letting it lull him to sleep?

“ _Fuck_ ,” Claude mouths silently once more, letting his forehead thunk against the brick of the chimney, in the same place he’d been sitting when he first realized how sunk he was, now realizing how much deeper he’s managed to sink despite fully knowing better. 

He can no longer deny it to himself: Claude’s feelings for Dimitri are no mere crush. 

Somehow, he’s carelessly let them develop into love.

Claude von Riegan is the biggest fool in Fodlan. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter really got away from me in terms of word count, to be honest. I'm going to go ahead and blame Claude for his inability to shut up. But now that we're done with most of the exposition, none of the future ones should be quite this long.
> 
> Chapter 3 will be posted on January 9th! I know that's a bit more than two weeks from now, but my plan is to post this at the end of Dimiclaude week as the free day entry. I promise it'll be worth the wait. ;) There will also be a few shorter fics from me during this time period, if all my schemes come to fruition. 
> 
> No matter what holiday you celebrate, I hope yours is a good one! See you in the new year!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dimitri causes problems on accident. Sylvain causes problems on purpose. Claude finally takes action.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's a few days late, but consider this my final contribution for Dimiclaude week.
> 
> I owe a LOT to akhikosanada for helping me get a handle on Sylvain! He's part of the reason why this chapter is up a few days later than I initially promised.

Sylvain Jose Gautier lives in dread of the day he finally meets his soulmate. 

He knows that the minute he matches with someone, his life as he knows it will effectively be over. He will be shipped back to Gautier along with his soulmate to, effectively, be his father’s next studhorse, just as his father had been at his age, and his father before him. His family line, after all, cannot be broken. There must always be a Gautier guarding the border. There must always be someone to wield the Lance of Ruin.

He pities his soulmate for this fate almost as much as he pities himself. 

Almost.

Sylvain wonders who she is, this unlucky, anonymous girl who’s fated to become his broodmare. Sometimes he half-hopes his soulmate is a man, if only to confound his father’s plans and ensure this damned bloodline ends with him. But either way, he is not free of the wondering, and the fear. Either way, there is someone out there in the shadows waiting to use him until they drain him dry, the way his father did to his mother. 

The older he gets, the longer he goes without meeting his end — the more he throws himself into distractions. When he was younger, it had been play-fighting with his friends; now, he flirts. Constantly. Indiscriminately. Sometimes, he does more than flirt. The area around Garreg Mach is more forgiving when it comes to physical relationships among the unmatched. Sylvain thinks he should be able to take advantage of this situation while he still can. 

His old friends — Ingrid, Dimitri, Felix — scoff at him, call him a whore. Perhaps they’re right. But Sylvain knows he’ll be someone’s whore either way. At least this way, he gets to choose whose whore he is. 

At least this way, he can find a distraction from his longing for the one person who will never be his. 

The sword tournament back in Horsebow Moon had, perhaps, been a healthier sort of distraction. He’d been there not out of any particular interest in the art of swordplay, but to simply watch Felix. To see the fire in his eyes as he faced a new opponent, the sweat pooling at his collarbone and the small of his back. To watch him, and daydream, and to pray no one could tell how hollow Sylvain was, having carved out a space inside himself for Felix long ago. 

Sylvain can remember wanting Felix long before he had known it was a sin to want Felix — not due to matters of his gender or his status, but because Felix is already spoken for. Has been, for as long as Sylvain has known him. And if it is wrong to want another person’s soulmate, it’s certainly worse to want the soulmate of the man who will, one day, be Sylvain’s _king_. 

It is easier than it should be, finding one more thing to loathe himself for. 

For most of his life, it has been easy enough for Sylvain to shove his feelings down and move on. Yet now, at Garreg Mach, in such close proximity to the only person he has ever loved in his life, Sylvain finds himself dreaming all the more of leaning forward to lick the sweat from Felix’s collarbone. Of letting down his habitual bun so Sylvain can run his fingers through dark hair. Of Felix’s strong legs wrapped around his waist as though they’ll never let go.

Of Felix’s hand slipping into his on a summer evening. Of Felix’s warmth at his back in battle, keeping his blind spot protected. Of Felix’s gruff voice muttering the three words he’ll never say, while his cheeks turn a gorgeous shade of red that would rival Sylvain’s hair. 

Felix had fought Claude von Riegan that day, an absolute debacle that had ended up being the highlight of the whole tournament. Sylvain had watched them fight, focusing all his attention on Felix at first — as usual — mesmerized by the sharp forms his body carved as he fought and by the passion he demonstrated. But then… then, Claude had pinned Felix, his arms standing straight out at his sides, and Sylvain had only watched it happen, mouth agape.

There were murmurs around him almost immediately about disqualifying Claude for such a dishonorable move — but Sylvain hadn’t been listening. His attention, for once, had gone to Leicester’s heir, who had uncharacteristic fury in his eyes. Sylvain had paid close attention to Claude, in that moment, not because he was perturbed by his actions, but because he thought he could recognize the look in his eyes.

 _I will not lose to you,_ that look said. _Not over this._

It is the same feeling Sylvain has, lately, every time he fights Dimitri. Knowing he can never take Dimitri’s place in Felix’s life, but not wishing to be so pathetic that he will let Dimitri take everything from him. 

But then Dimitri himself had stepped onto the battlefield. Escorted Claude off it, away from the murmurs. Comforting Claude, the man who had humiliated Felix in battle, and not his soulmate. 

Sylvain had paid close attention to this, too. 

And as the months pass, all that autumn, Sylvain continues to watch Claude von Riegan closely. If he is plotting something with Sylvain’s king, he needs to know what it is. 

—

Pining is pathetic. Claude von Riegan does not _pine_.

He has too much he wants to accomplish this year at Garreg Mach — too much he must accomplish with his _life_ — to get hung up on one single, unattainable boy. Even if that boy is a dashingly handsome literal prince, kind and caring to a fault, who has been the only person to give Claude’s dreams any sort of credence.

Even if Claude did fall asleep in said boy’s arms last night, giving him one of the soundest nights’ sleep he’s ever had. 

Normally, Claude is restless at night. He doesn’t have nightmares — at least not often — but often finds himself with too much on his mind, too much left to do, to let himself rest. But last night… Last night, lulled by the regular rhythm of Dimitri’s breathing, feeling the warmth of his body pressed against his in the narrow bed… Claude cannot remember the last time he slept so deeply, nor so well. He cannot recall the last time he felt so safe in the darkness.

No. Claude flinches to himself as he crosses the academy courtyard, making his way to the Golden Deer classroom for morning lecture. He cannot afford to think that way. Not now, and certainly not about Dimitri. Not when Dimitri is as far out of reach as anyone could possibly be.

“Claude.”

The deep voice behind him makes him freeze in his tracks. Speaking of…

“Your Royalness!” he says, keeping his voice light as he turns on his heel. “Good morning.” 

Claude finds he cannot dare allude to the night they shared together, even if all they did was lie on the same bed and, perhaps, unconsciously, cuddle a little. He is not sure how much Dimitri remembers, given that Claude had run before Dimitri had properly woken up. 

“You look like you’re feeling better,” he says aloud, for the benefit of the Blue Lions and Golden Deer that pass close by them on their way to their seats. “Good to see you out and about.”

Dimitri still says nothing, looking at the ground between their feet. Claude is about to open his big dumb mouth again, say his goodbyes — until Dimitri’s hand shoots out, snagging on the fabric of Claude’s left sleeve. He gives a gentle tug, and Claude cannot help but take an involuntary step forward, into Dimitri’s space.

“Dimitri?” he asks quietly; they are shaded behind a pillar on the walkway, not in immediate view of their classmates… though anyone looking for them would certainly be able to spot them. “Are you all right? Did you… did you sleep okay?”

Dimitri’s throat bobs before he looks at Claude. Some hint of the dark circles from last night yet remain, but some of the color has returned to his face, which helps the knot in Claude’s chest loosen just a little. 

“I slept,” Dimitri begins hoarsely, before clearing his throat. “I slept… very well, Claude. And I believe I have you to thank for that.”

Their eyes connect, and Claude wishes he could deafen the pounding in his chest, make it so that no one could hear it. 

“I…”

“You stayed the entire night,” Dimitri says softly. “Did you not?”

So Dimitri does remember, after all. And Claude finds he cannot deny it. 

“You asked me to stay,” he says simply, offering a shy smile. “I… I couldn’t say no to you.”

Something changes in Dimitri’s expression at those words. The look in his eyes goes from searching to… overwhelmed, his eyes suddenly shining for a moment before his face crumples. 

“I see.” He releases Claude’s sleeve, and he feels somewhat heavier for the loss of contact. “Then… then thank you, Claude. For staying with me.” He actually bows as he thanks Claude, hand pressed against his chest, hair falling into his face. There is something stilted in his voice, in his expression, and it makes Claude start to scramble.

“I’m—” He bites his tongue. “I didn’t mean for it to be a burden. An… intrusion. You were having a bad day and I came barreling right into the middle of it…”

“And you fixed it.” There is still pain in Dimitri’s eyes as he straightens, but he gives Claude a smile nonetheless. “Well… perhaps as much as one person can fix it. I do not think I can adequately express my gratitude to you, Claude.” He takes a deep breath. “Nor will I dissuade you from taking further visits in the future, if you should so choose.”

Claude’s eyes go wide. Is… is Dimitri really doing this? Giving him an open invitation to come to his room at night? Can Claude possibly remain wise enough to stay away?

“I…” 

The bells overhead chime, signaling the start of lecture, and the two of them break apart as suddenly as if they’d both been shoved.

“Think about it,” Dimitri insists, right before turning and rushing off to his classroom.

Claude reaches, unconsciously, to grip his left wrist.

“Okay,” he says to no one. “Okay.”

—

And so this becomes their new routine:

Claude will, after dinner, meet Dimitri in his room, sometimes bringing food along if he suspects that Dimitri has not taken the time to feed himself. The first night they’d shared together had taught Claude not only how it feels to hold Dimitri in his arms; it has shown him that the prince is not quite so polished, not so proficient at caring for himself, as he might have others believe. 

More often than not, all they do together, during their evenings, is study. But as their nights continue, their study sessions often devolve into Claude simply… talking with Dimitri. Claude wants to learn why Dimitri clings so tightly to duty, why he keeps himself at such a distance even from those he calls his friends. To learn why Dimitri has little preference for what foods he eats, why he doesn’t care for stuffed animals, why he wears gloves or gauntlets at all hours of the day. 

Claude wishes to see for himself the heart that beats beneath the princely armor, so that he can understand everything about this person his own heart has chosen to belong to. 

For he is out of places to run from his feelings for Dimitri. Unable to lie to himself that these feelings do not exist, unable to keep talking himself out of feeling them. Unable to keep his distance, or to stop giving little bits of himself for Dimitri to hold: little shards of Claude’s heart that he knows full well Dimitri will one day have to let tumble to the ground where they will splinter like glass. 

Because he finds himself opening up, too. Telling Dimitri stories from his childhood, growing up as a perpetual outsider. He only holds back the name “Almyra” — not ready to give up that last secret, not just yet — but tells Dimitri, nonetheless, how he’s never felt like he belonged, not anywhere, not even at Garreg Mach. Of the bullying he faced, the constant rejection over something he couldn’t help or change about himself. Over things he has no desire to change about himself. 

He needs Dimitri to understand why his dreams matter so much to him. To understand that that night on the roof, under the stars, still means more to him than Dimitri might know.

Dimitri listens, his expression grave, as Claude tells him all these things.

“And Hilda?” he finally asks him. “Have you found no sense of belonging with your soulmate?”

“I…”

Claude opens his mouth, then shuts it. He keeps forgetting that Dimitri does not know the truth about the relationship he has with Hilda, the firm friendship that has blossomed despite others’ firm belief that their feelings can only be romantic ones. Hilda may be his best friend here, but even she doesn’t know everything about him, or can fully understand the isolation he’s felt for most of his life. 

She can’t know about the safety and acceptance he’s found here, with Dimitri. No one, not even Dimitri, is allowed to know that. 

“I guess,” he finally tells Dimitri, deflating somewhat. “Anyway, enough about me. Let’s take a break from all this ‘studying,’ huh?”

By “a break,” he means board games. Really, an ideal distraction from any other activity he’d rather be doing alone with Dimitri, right now, if Dimitri shared his inclinations. 

Dimitri is a nightmarishly bad chess player; he is reactive, never thinking as many steps ahead as Claude is, and tends to put his king on the front lines rather than keep the piece protected. Besides, he doesn’t seem to enjoy playing chess the way Claude does, and so more often than not, they set the chess board aside while Claude brings out the backgammon set that his father had sent to Fodlan with him. He’d had to teach Dimitri how to play, since he hadn’t been familiar with the game at first. But it leaves them, skill-wise, on a more even keel, strategizing about how to unify one’s own team rather than conquer the other. 

All things considered, ideologically preferable to chess, at least in Claude’s mind. 

Claude sets up the board, thankful for the order of it, to have something to do with his hands and his mind. There are some nights, like tonight, when Claude cannot keep a lid on all his inconvenient feelings, when fighting the urge to simply take Dimitri’s hand feels like a battle he cannot win. 

But with a game in front of him, another task to focus on… it’s at least bearable.

They start to play, rolling the dice and moving their pieces around the board, but Claude’s gaze keeps drifting to Dimitri’s gloved hands as they skim over the painted bone of the game pieces. His hands move deliberately, thoughtfully, delicately picking up the game pieces and marching them toward his home board. As he watches Dimitri’s hands, he cannot keep himself from wondering, yet again, what they might feel like in his own. What they might feel like in his mouth, or on his body. The way Dimitri might sigh, if Claude were ever bold enough to kiss him. The way his body might move against Claude’s own were they to lay down in this bed, right now, and fumble their way into pleasure. 

Well. So much for letting the game distract him. 

“Your move,” Dimitri tells him. Those blue eyes of his dance over the backgammon set, examining the positions of their pieces. “Is your attention elsewhere? Your troops are well out of formation.”

Claude blinks, studying the backgammon board. Three of his pieces straddle the bar, the others scattered around the outer boards while Dimitri’s pieces line his home board in tall, even rows.

“Yeah,” he acknowledges, and he has the same sinking feeling he’d once had, months and months ago, the first time he’d sparred with Dimitri and the prince had pinned him to the wall with his gaze. 

“You will need a miracle to come back from this.” There is humor in Dimitri’s expression, the corners of his lips quirking upward. 

“You’re right.” Claude thinks, again, of that smile pressing against his own, and has to shut his eyes against the image of it. 

“Looks like I’ve lost.”

—

His nights with Dimitri become a new constant in Claude’s life, replacing his solitary evenings spent in the library or in his own room. He is careful, more so than he was that first night, that he does not overstay his welcome, that he says his farewells before curfew and makes his way back to his own, lonely room. He cannot afford a repeat of the first night he’d visited Dimitri, when he’d allowed himself to fall asleep in the prince’s arms.

But that does not mean they do not happen.

Once, Claude falls asleep while studying for his wyvern rider certification exam, sprawling over Dimitri’s bed only to wake up in the middle of the night, a blanket tossed over him and the prince asleep in a chair by his bedside. Three other nights, Dimitri asks Claude to stay, wearing that same lost look he’d had the first night Claude had stayed over. And on several further occasions, they simply stay up too late talking, only noticing how far past curfew they have gone when the light of dawn creeps into Dimitri’s windows. 

It is on one such evening together, talking into the wee hours of the night, that Dimitri opens up to Claude about his relationship with Felix. They both sit, cross-legged, on Dimitri’s bed, a demure foot of space carefully maintained between them. 

“Felix and I,” Dimitri says, apparently weighing his words, “have been betrothed since we were a year old. There is a long history there… and a painful one.”

“The Tragedy of Duscur,” Claude says, taking a shot in the dark. He’s certainly aware of it from history books. Dimitri has never spoken with him directly about it, but judging from the way he flinches, Claude assumes he’s close.

“Yes.” Dimitri exhales, painfully. “His… Felix’s brother was killed protecting me. Saving my life. I do not think Felix has ever forgiven me for it.” He shifts on the bed, and Claude resists the urge to reach out and steady him. “And two years later, during our maiden battle, I fear Felix may have… gotten a rather unflattering impression of me. And not an entirely inaccurate one, either.”

“What do you mean?”

But Dimitri just shakes his head. 

“I was… crueler, than I needed to be, on the battlefield. Permit me to simply leave it at that.”

Claude swears under his breath, tipping his head back to study Dimitri’s ceiling. Dimitri had told him, once, that his relationship with Felix was complicated; knowing more about it now, it feels less like Dimitri is making excuses for the way Felix lashes out at him, calling him cruel names he hasn’t deserved. With this sort of context, it makes Felix’s behavior toward him… well, more understandable, if not forgivable in Claude’s eyes. 

“But,” Dimitri says urgently, and Claude looks back down at him. “It’s… i-it’s been much better here at the academy. I think he appreciates having others around to talk with.” Claude cannot help but think, savagely, that Felix getting on better with others than with his soulmate is _certainly_ not a sign of a happy marriage — but Dimitri is not done talking. “By the time we wed, it…” Dimitri pauses, looking as though he is trying to convince himself as much as Claude. “It will be… easier. We will both be grown, able to move on from… from everything. He and I will be able to love one another properly then.”

Claude cannot help his sharp intake of breath at that. His chest suddenly, achingly seizes at the thought of receiving a wedding invitation with Dimitri and Felix’s names on it, of watching them stand at the front of a cathedral while their clasped hands are bound together with Blaiddyd-blue ribbon. 

“Claude?” 

He shakes his head, eyes shut against the image. Why does he keep forgetting this inevitable fact of their future? Why is he so intent on letting his own heart be shattered?

“I’m… fine,” he eventually says. Dimitri frowns, but lets it go.

“And… and you and Hilda?” he asks. He swallows, looking down at his knees. “Have you had any troubles… adjusting, to your relationship?”

The only difficulty he and Hilda have is the fact that they matched at all, that they must keep up this farce that their love is romantic. Claude cannot fathom speaking to Hilda the way Felix speaks to Dimitri, even as her friend. But he does not know how to approach this topic with Dimitri, the fact that his relationship with Felix should not be something to strive for or accept as it is. 

Claude knows Felix is not a monster. Felix is harsh to everyone, regardless of their level of intimacy. And perhaps he will, as Dimitri hopes, mellow with time. Perhaps he will end up being the sort of lover that Dimitri deserves. 

There is no way to know… and no way to properly broach the subject, not while Dimitri is still trying so hard to convince himself that everything is fine. At best, he will only make Dimitri angry, defensive of his soulmate; at worst, he will drive Dimitri away, leaving him without support. 

“We had trouble at first,” he starts, and sees Dimitri tense, just for a minute. “She didn’t want me to be her soulmate.” Still doesn’t, if Claude is honest with himself; they may be best friends, but Hilda will never love Claude the way she loves Marianne. 

Dimitri looks genuinely shocked.

“Why wouldn’t she want that?” 

Claude shrugs, not wanting to betray more of Hilda’s confidence than he already has.

“And now,” he concludes, “here we are.” He spreads his hands with a slight smile. He doesn’t have it in him to outright lie to Dimitri, to smile and pretend he is head over heels with someone who has no romantic interest in him. 

Dimitri is still looking at him, wide-eyed.

“Well, I’m very glad Hilda came to her senses. Someone with your talents, your intelligence, your grace…” Dimitri clears his throat, looking slightly pink. “You deserve happiness with Hilda. You… you deserve to be loved.”

The last sentence is hushed, almost as though he is unaware he is saying it. Claude cannot help the color that floods his own cheeks.

“So do you,” he tells Dimitri, and the prince gifts him a bittersweet smile. 

—

They are playing with fire, Claude knows. 

The longer they keep this up, the more likely it is that Claude will be accused of a sin he has not committed (even if he really, really wants to sin with Dimitri). Still, the threat of further rumors about him are not sufficient to keep Claude away from Dimitri’s side.

Then he is confronted by, of all people, Sylvain Gautier. 

It happens on a typical weekday afternoon in the middle of Ethereal Moon, while Claude is practicing his archery in the training grounds. There are targets set along the perimeter of the grounds, bullseyes and wooden humanesque figures for students to practice their aim on. Claude comes here often, not only to continue honing his combat skills, but because there is something almost relaxing about having his hands on a bow, nocking an arrow and drawing it back. When actual meditation is not enough to keep his mind as calm as it ought to be, Claude has found archery, the combat style he has trained in from childhood, to be a fair substitute.

He has set his target beneath the overhang of the training grounds, out of the sun, and takes pleasure, for several minutes, in the familiar motions of firing an arrow. _Nock, draw and release. Nock, draw and release. Nock, draw—_

—and he pauses, noting movement out of the corner of his eye as a few of his fellow students enter the training grounds. He turns, loosening his grip, and notes that Dimitri is among them, with Dedue on his right and Felix on his left. Felix is talking about something, animated, and Dimitri appears to be listening intently to whatever it is. Something seizes Claude’s gut as he suddenly, perversely, aches to have Dimitri’s attention on him, and only him, here, where everyone can see them, outside of the seclusion of Dimitri's bedroom, with Felix looking on…

…and then Dimitri looks up. Claude feels heat rush to his face at having been caught staring so openly, but Dimitri just smiles at him, raising a hand in greeting as he and his two companions make their way to the rack of training weapons. Claude nods at him, unable to help the smile that comes across his own face as he and Dimitri look at each other.

“Wow, you’ve really got to do better than that, Claude.”

The voice comes from somewhere far off to his left, the tone chillingly casual. Claude turns away from Dimitri, in spite of himself, to see the speaker leaning against the wall, a knowing look on his face that Claude doesn’t like.

“Sylvain,” he greets, making sure to smile at him, hoping it comes across as broad, friendly, and platonic as it had with Dimitri. “Not talking about my aim, are you? Cause last I checked, I was the best shot at the monastery.” 

He raises his bow again, taking careful aim at the target thirty feet away. He hopes if he looks busy enough, Sylvain will lose interest. But it is not the case.

“No need to play dumb.” Sylvain stretches, putting his hands behind his head. “Doesn’t suit you.”

Claude lowers his bow and twirls the arrow in his hand idly, trying to buy himself some time.

“Did you want something, Sylvain?” _Nock, draw and release._

“We all want things, don’t we, Claude?” Sylvain still appears casual when Claude glances over at him. “Hotter professors, more money, a caring family… a new lover. But we don’t always get to have those things.”

 _Nock, draw and release._ Claude frowns in the direction of the wooden target. 

“And what is it you think I want?”

“Something you can’t have.” Sylvain laces his fingers together, pushing his hands away from his body as he cracks his knuckles. “Something you’re not supposed to have, seeing as it already belongs with someone else.”

Claude feels his blood run cold at the implication. He quickly steels himself, not wanting Sylvain, of all people, to be the one that cracks him.

“You talking about Dimitri?” If he names the elephant in the room, he thinks, he can take away the power Sylvain thinks he has over him. “Who said anything about me wanting him?”

It’s true that he does, of course, but Claude plans on denying that for as long as he can. 

“C’mon,” Sylvain wheedles, as though they’re two good friends shooting the shit. “I’ve seen the way you look at him—”

“Are you accusing me of _smiling_ at him?” Claude can’t help but laugh. “Stars, you won’t let a guy get away with anything, will you?”

Sylvain’s good humor vanishes, just for a moment.

“I don’t care if you smile at His Highness. I do care, however, that you’re sleeping with him.”

“No, I’m not,” Claude insists, and it is refreshing not to have to lie. “What makes you think I am?”

“Claude,” Sylvain sighs, and actually slings an arm over Claude’s shoulders. “Didn’t I tell you not to play dumb? My bedroom shares a wall with his, you know. I’ve heard you in there, together, at all hours of the night. Talking, laughing, whispering… moaning…” 

“There’s…!” Claude ducks out from under Sylvain’s arm. “Moaning?” he repeats, incredulous. “Don’t exaggerate.” There’ve never been any interactions with Dimitri, in his room or otherwise, that ended in one of them moaning. If there had been, Claude is certain he’d still be fantasizing about it. 

“Look,” Sylvain says, holding his hands up defensively, “I’m just saying, when you hear your prince moan the name of someone who isn’t his soulmate… that tends to stick with you.”

Claude can’t listen to Sylvain talk like this any more. Not only for the sake of his own gullible hormones, but because he knows exactly what Sylvain is trying to do. He wants to turn Claude’s feelings for Dimitri, forbidden as they are, into a weapon that can be used against him.

Claude refuses. He will not let his heart be turned into a blade, no matter what Sylvain says to taunt him.

“Why do you care?” he asks. It’s not worth it trying to convince Sylvain of the truth when it’s clear he won’t believe him. “The number of people you’ve slept with this year, and you’re going to come after me for one person?”

“Ah, but I’m not matched.” That smirk is back. “No one for me to be disloyal to.”

 _Disloyal_.

Claude turns that over in his mind. It can’t be a dig at Hilda, or he’d have mentioned her by now. It has to do, then, with Dimitri’s loyalty, and the ways in which Claude is supposedly helping him break it. And the person Dimitri is meant to be loyal to…

“Felix,” Claude says. Sylvain’s eyes widen, just a fraction, but he doesn’t miss it. “You think you’re protecting Felix?”

Sylvain is still smiling, but the muscles in his face have tightened.

“Or I’m protecting His Highness’s virtue. Take your pick.”

Claude can’t help but laugh at that, given Sylvain’s own reputation. 

“Don’t play dumb, Sylvain,” he says, unable to resist parroting Sylvain’s own words back at him. “It doesn’t suit you.” He leans his bow against the stone wall, crossing his arms as he studies Sylvain. “You like Felix, huh?”

He thinks it’ll finally be the thing that gets Sylvain to back down, to let him get back to his archery practice in peace. But Sylvain, though his throat bobs nervously, is unmovable.

“More than you like Dimitri.” The forcefulness of it surprises Claude, as is the fact that he readily revealed it to him. “For way longer, too.”

Claude studies his expression. Turns a few things over in his mind. Tries, to the best of his ability, not to let his own hopes play into it.

“You think you like him more than Dimitri does?”

Sylvain flinches, just for a moment. It’s the only glimpse Claude has gotten of how Sylvain really feels in all this — but it’s over just as fast, Sylvain’s mask slipping back into place.

“Maybe. But that doesn’t matter.” There is steel in Sylvain’s gaze as he looks at Claude. “After everything he’s been through, every way he’s tried to make it work with Dimitri… I won’t let the two of you hurt him like this. He doesn’t deserve it.”

Sylvain’s anger — genuine anger — takes Claude aback. It must be true, then, that Sylvain’s feelings for Felix are not unlike his own for Dimitri. There’s no other reason Sylvain would be this fiercely protective of Felix, siding with him over his king. 

But… there’s something odd about the last thing Sylvain said. About how his feelings for Felix don’t matter. About how Felix has been struggling to love Dimitri for years. 

“Why doesn’t it matter?” The question is gentle, but Claude is genuinely curious. “If you like Felix, and he—”

“He’d never leave Dimitri.” It’s almost a whisper as Sylvain says it. “He was born to be his shield. The Goddess wrote as much on his skin, the day he was born.”

He looks out into the training grounds, out of the shadows where he and Claude are standing to where Felix and Dimitri are sparring in the sunlight. Claude follows his gaze, watching the way Dimitri moves, the way his hands grip the spear. Sylvain watches Felix, too, with open longing, before turning away, looking back at Claude.

“Dimitri won’t leave him for you, either.” He looks back at the sparring pair. “That’s just how it is: they have to make it work. They don’t have a choice.”

Sylvain peels himself away from the scene, exiting the training grounds without another word. Claude watches him go… then looks back at Felix and Dimitri. At the way Dimitri’s armor shines in the afternoon sun.

“Yes, we do,” he whispers to himself. “Don’t we?”

He picks up his bow, aiming it at the distant target. _Nock, draw—_

_— and release._

Bullseye.

—

Claude pauses that night in front of Dimitri’s bedroom door, unaccountably nervous.

He knows what he’s about to do will have repercussions he cannot yet predict. He does not know how Dimitri will react to what he is about to do, if it will take even Dimitri’s friendship away from him. 

But… he has already made up his mind.

He does not knock before entering. Dimitri had let him know, weeks ago now, that he did not mind Claude simply intruding into his space, and so he turns the door handle and pushes his way into the room, where he finds Dimitri studying by candlelight at his desk, tired circles under his eyes.

He takes a moment to admire the sight of him, the look of concentration on his face, before saying, “Hey there, Dimitri.”

Dimitri looks up from his notes, smiling when he sees Claude has arrived. 

“Claude!” He shuts his manuals immediately, getting up to greet him. “You’re late. Did you get held up with something?”

“Yeah,” Claude says, and grips the book he has brought with him tighter. “With… something.” Claude makes sure Dimitri’s door shuts behind him before turning back to face him, holding the book he’s brought between them like a shield. He spent an hour, earlier this evening, digging through his room to find this particular text, and another two talking himself into being brave enough to show it to Dimitri. 

He smiles at Dimitri, letting his hopes shine through. 

“Let’s ditch studying tonight. Thought I’d share a legend I found, instead.”

Dimitri’s head tilts curiously.

“Very well…”

He abandons his desk, coming to sit cross-legged at the head of his bed, his usual position when they spend time together in here. Claude does the same at the foot, propping the book open on his lap.

Claude locks eyes with Dimitri.

“This is a story about soulmates,” he tells him.

It’s hard to miss the way Dimitri shifts at that, the way his fingertips dig into his mattress.

“All right…”

Claude takes a deep breath, looks down at his book, and starts to read.

“Once, in a faraway land,” he begins, “there was a princess whose kingdom was under siege. The princess knew little of the outside world, but when the invaders came, she fled, in the hopes of finding strong allies to help her restore her kingdom…”

He continues telling the story, keeping his attention focused on the page even though it is a tale he is well familiar with. The princess coming across a band of mercenaries and enlisting their aid. The princess locking eyes with the mercenary leader’s young son, their soulmarks burning into their forearms as they did so. The princess and the mercenary’s son swearing a bond of loyalty that would last a lifetime, as he helped her reclaim her rightful kingdom and drive out the invaders.

The first part of this story, Claude knows, would not be so out of place in Fodlan. Fated meetings, a radiant hero saving a princess, heroic battles fought side by side in the name of honor.

But this is not a legend that has made it to Fodlan.

“—Upon the restoration of her throne,” Claude ends, still reading from the page, “the new queen was expected to take a consort.” 

He pauses, his throat suddenly dry. He looks up at Dimitri, who is still paying attention, though his eyes have taken something of a glazed look at the word “consort”. Not because he is bored, Claude reasons, but because he knows how these tales would end in Fodlan, with the queen and the mercenary’s son holding a lavish wedding and living happily ever after. 

Claude licks his lips, and makes himself keep reading.

“The queen,” he reads, “decided to wed the captain of her guard, who had fought by her side through many fierce battles to reclaim their homeland, and had loved her from their childhood, regardless of her rank. The mercenary’s son, on the other hand, left the queen’s side…”

“Wait,” Dimitri interrupts, sounding bewildered. “ _What_?”

“…And began to travel the world,” Claude keeps reading — a valiant effort, given how badly he wants to look at Dimitri right now. “By his side was his faithful tactician, who had helped the young mercenary lead the queen’s armies to victory. He had traveled the land by the mercenary’s side… and as they left it, he would continue to do so until they both grew old.” Claude takes a deep, shaking breath. “But the queen and the mercenary swore a vow, before parting ways, that if she ever had need of him again, to call on him immediately. And no matter where, he would come swiftly to stand by his soulmate’s side, as her dearest friend and most trusted general.”

He dares to look up at Dimitri now. Dimitri, who is staring at him, his expression difficult to read. Is he angry? Confused? 

Claude smiles at him, hoping it will break some of the tension he might be feeling. 

“And they all lived happily,” he ends, not breaking eye contact with Dimitri, “until their peaceful ends came.”

Dimitri lunges for the book, taking it from Claude’s unresisting hands.

“Where…” His eyes skim the page, as though to confirm what Claude read to him was truly written there. “Where did you find a book like this?” His voice is hardly above a whisper.

“I brought it to Garreg Mach with me,” Claude tells him. He shifts, gripping Dimitri’s bedspread nervously. “I grew up hearing that story. Lots of stories like it, too, where soulmates found meaning in each other’s lives that had nothing to do with romance.”

Dimitri surges to his feet, still holding the book. 

“I…” He flips a few pages, then lets it snap shut. “No,” he says, shaking it at Claude. “You should not have shown me this. You should… you should not have brought this here.”

He lets the book fall, face down, onto the bed, as though it will poison him if he holds it any longer. Claude remains seated on the bed, pulling the book back into his lap, hugging it to his chest as he watches Dimitri pace.

“Dimitri…?” he asks, watching him cross the room, stand facing the window. “Is everything all right?”

Dimitri shakes his head.

“Why…” He turns to look at Claude, and there’s no mistaking that he’s angry. “Why would you bring this… this heresy to me? After all I have told you about Felix—”

“Because,” Claude says somewhat desperately, getting to his feet. “Dimitri, you seem so… unhappy, when you talk about marrying Felix. You don’t seem to realize that you have options—”

“That is because I do not.” 

“Yes, you do,” Claude insists, and holds the book up again. “This book _proves_ that you do. These two people in the story didn’t want to be together. Not like that. And if it’s not something they choose, then—”

“Claude,” Dimitri says, an edge to his voice, but Claude is not deterred. 

“If it isn’t something you and Felix are both _choosing_ ,” he continues, his voice rising despite himself, “then what’s the _point_?”

He feels himself getting desperate to reach Dimitri, through whatever walls he has built around himself. Whatever religious doctrine still cushions him, not allowing him to seek his own happiness. 

Dimitri takes a long moment to answer. Then he gestures at the book again.

“Stories like theirs,” he begins, “may be how you do things in Leicester—”

“Almyra.”

The word slips from Claude’s mouth before he realizes what he’s said. He’s told Dimitri so much about himself, but never… never where he’s from. Still afraid that despite Dimitri’s attitude about people from foreign lands, he might still harbor hatred for Claude like so many other Fodlaners do. He takes a deep breath, wanting to remain steady.

“In Almyra,” he repeats, not wanting there to be any ambiguity about this, “we grow up with these stories. This… this _heresy_ , as you call it. It’s what’s normal for us.” 

He refuses to look away — if this is the moment Dimitri chooses to hate him, he wants to see it fully, so that it might finally cure him of these feelings he’s harbored for so long. 

Dimitri keeps looking at him, taking a long time to formulate his answer.

“We are not,” he finally says, “in Almyra, Claude.”

That’s the reality of it, then. Dimitri will never budge, because Fodlan will never budge. Claude wishes he could say having confirmation that all his hopes will come to nought were a comfort, after so many weeks of uncertainty.

He would like to say that… but he cannot.

He stands there for several long moments, unsure of what else to do. Dimitri is not looking at him. Then, the prince finally speaks up.

“I think you should go.”

Claude closes his eyes. Dimitri is right, of course. There is no sense in him staying here, prolonging the moment he can retreat to safety. 

But instead, he speaks up, voice wavering.

“Is that what you want me to do?”

He makes himself look at Dimitri, try to read his body language since his words are not coming. Dimitri’s arms are crossed, his brow furrowed. His eyes dart between Claude, standing before him, and the wall his bedroom shares with Felix’s. 

In the end, Dimitri says nothing at all.

Claude takes that silence as his answer, that cowardly equivocation, and goes without saying anything more, taking his book with him.

—

That is the last night he spends with Dimitri.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for ending it that way... but good news! The next chapter will be up *tomorrow*! I'm very excited to share it with all of you, because it was one of the first scenes that popped into my head when I started planning this fic.
> 
> Next time: the ball.
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/apostaroni)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ball brings overdue changes to Claude and Dimitri's lives. Dimitri makes a wish, and Claude gets his wish.

Claude avoids Dimitri after that night, as best he can. It is not hard, given how little the house leaders generally intermingle. But he cannot go forever without seeing him again, and a mere week later, Claude finds himself at the winter ball, watching Dimitri dance with his soulmate.

Claude dances with Hilda to open the ball, of course — each of the house leaders is expected to do so with their soulmate, if they’ve found theirs. Hilda is an enthusiastic dancer, and Claude happily lets her lead him through the steps. Not far away, Dimitri and Felix dance stiffly together, Dimitri performing the choreographed movements while Felix’s eyes keep shifting as though waiting for his chance to escape. Edelgard, who hasn’t found her soulmate yet, instead opens the ball with Hubert, who follows her lead as competently as he does in everything else. 

Hilda is a vision giggling in pink chiffon as Claude twirls her around the ballroom, putting their own variation on the traditional dance they’re expected to perform for the student body. He dips her low, which almost certainly is not part of this gavotte, but neither of them could care less, Hilda laughing as the ends of her hair brush the floor. 

For once, the whispers that follow Claude only have warm things to say: about how happy he and his soulmate look together, how goddess-blessed their union must be. And Claude _is_ happy with Hilda, having her as his friend... but that isn’t what they mean, which sours things slightly. None of these Fodlaners could care less about the fond friendship he’s found with his soulmate, the partnership of equals that’s the first Claude’s had in his life. All they can gossip about is speculation on how many children the goddess will bless him and Hilda with as a reward for following her plan.

He supposes he’s been the subject of far worse gossip in the past, but that doesn’t make this an easier pill to swallow. Especially given everything that’s happened lately with Dimitri.

The song ends, and Claude makes a show of bowing to kiss Hilda’s hand, making her laugh and wrinkle her nose at him. She wanders off to find some punch, while Claude moves back to the edge of the crowd, taking a deep breath in. He never enjoys being at the center of a party like that, all eyes on him. Especially when parties like this noble shindig are well out of his comfort zone, with none of the exuberance and celebration he associates with a party. 

Tonight it is exhausting, too, to keep up his usual cheerful facade. After the way things had happened with Dimitri, Claude cannot help but want to be alone, to find a quiet space and get away from all the chatter about true love and soulmates. 

Still, he lingers for nearly an hour, dancing with whoever invites him (mostly first-years enamored by his good looks and relationship with Hilda) and drinking a few glasses of punch. He even snags Professor Byleth out for a dance when he sees them standing, looking lost, at the edge of the ballroom. But eventually, even his own goodwill runs out, and he finds himself stepping into the officer’s academy courtyard for a bit of air.

He finds, to his slight surprise, that he is not alone.

“Dimitri?”

He’d recognize that fair head anywhere, his hair reflecting the moonlight as he sits on a bench alone. He appears lost in thought, though looks up in surprise at the sound of his name.

“Ah… Claude.” 

Dimitri offers him a distant smile, the same politeness he used to show Claude at the beginning of the school year. Well before they became familiar with one another. 

“Are you enjoying the ball?” he asks. It’s a question that Dimitri might ask anyone he runs into out here in the moonlight, and for some reason that grates at Claude more than anything else.

“No.” Dimitri blinks in surprise, but Claude has lied enough to Dimitri for a lifetime. “I mean, I’m sure some people are having fun, but…” He waves vaguely at the windows behind them. “Stuffy noble dances, string quartets… Not exactly my scene.”

Dimitri shifts on his bench.

“You and Hilda looked lovely together,” he offers. Another platitude. He feels what Dimitri is trying to do, feels the tug of the old dance they used to do together. Claude finds that, tonight, he does not have the patience for it. 

“I don’t want to talk about me and Hilda.”

Dimitri wilts, then nods.

“I see.” He shifts again. “I’m rather glad I caught you tonight. I… I wished to apologize to you.”

Claude takes a deep breath, bowing his head as he processes this. 

“Really.” He raises his head to meet Dimitri’s eyes. “And… what were you going to apologize for?”

Dimitri’s hands twist in his lap. 

“I… I am not sure,” he admits. Claude nods grimly, having expected as much. Claude may be hurt by Dimitri repeatedly choosing Felix over him, but it’s not as though, by Fodlan standards, Dimitri is doing anything _wrong_. “I only know that the distance that has opened up between us is… is intolerable. Claude…” 

Dimitri gets to his feet, his expression filled with regret. 

“You are… important, to me,” he says, halting. Claude cannot help the way his heart soars at the words. “A valuable ally, yes, but also… also a dear companion. A trusted confidant.” Dimitri takes a deep breath, pinching his eyes shut tight. “And… I have missed you, these past few days. I have no right to ask your forgiveness after my outburst, after sending you so rudely from my room, but please…”

“Dimitri.”

Dimitri looks up at him, and Claude gives himself a moment to truly appreciate how beautiful Dimitri is like this, with moonlight illuminating all his lovely features and catching on the silver filigree of his ball finery. Dimitri has abandoned his usual academy uniform tonight for a deep blue kaftan covered in fine silver trim and embroidery. In the light of the ballroom, both serve to highlight the pale blue of his eyes and the fairness of his skin; but here in the darkness, under the moon, Dimitri’s beauty somehow transcends Claude’s ability to describe it. 

“Dimitri,” he says again, and deflates with a sigh. “I just want you to be happy,” he tells him. “No matter who it’s with.”

And this is true. He’d gone to Dimitri’s room that night not with the hope of seducing him, but simply to show Dimitri that he has options. Choices. To show him that he doesn’t have to obey some goddess, or some birthmark, for the rest of his life. It would be wonderful if Dimitri chose Claude in the end… but regardless, he cannot stand by and let someone he cares so deeply for let all his choices be made for him. 

“Happy…” Dimitri repeats. He closes his eyes. “I wish for that, as well. If I work hard enough… if I only try harder, perhaps I can.” 

He looks up at the sky above them, at the stars twinkling in the clear night sky’s endless void. Claude cannot keep himself from looking over at Dimitri, at the way his profile is illuminated as he studies the stars overhead. Claude thinks about the way the stars make him feel, like his dreams are small. Like he, a simple human, is capable of reaching them.

Dimitri looks ethereal like this, under the moon. Like his skin is spun from stardust.

And Claude… Claude wants nothing more than to be able to reach him. 

He should not do what he is about to do. There are a million reasons why he should bid Dimitri goodnight and head back inside. He has already been rejected once; Dimitri has shown no interest in Claude, specifically, nor in deviating from the Goddess’s supposed path for him. 

But… Claude has always been an optimist at heart. 

“Hey, Dimitri,” he says quietly, attracting Dimitri’s attention. “Do you want to go somewhere with me?”

Dimitri’s lips part in surprise.

“Where would we go?” 

“Not far,” Claude promises. “Somewhere you’ll like.”

He extends his hand, not knowing what he’ll do if Dimitri rejects him again. He only knows that this is the last shot he’s taking, the last gambit he’ll attempt, before giving up on ever trying to show Dimitri the way his life could be. 

If only Dimitri were brave enough to reach for it. 

But then Dimitri surprises Claude, and does. 

He extends his hand with only the slightest of hesitation, resting his hand atop Claude’s. They are both wearing gloves to ward off the chill - but it is enough for Claude to feel the weight of it, the warmth of Dimitri’s skin through two layers of linen and wool. 

He savors it, feeling the way that their hands could fit together.

“Let’s go,” he says, being brave, and Dimitri’s true smile reemerges. 

—

They run through the grounds of Garreg Mach, Dimitri right at Claude’s heels, their feet pattering across the bridge to the cathedral. Claude finds himself laughing, breathless with the euphoria of being with Dimitri like this, light on their feet with all their cares left behind them. 

The Goddess Tower looms just ahead, casting a long shadow in the moonlight. Claude comes to a halt a good fifty yards from it, and Dimitri does the same, the two of them looking up at the imposing structure, carved from limestone and glimmering in the moonlight. 

They cannot ascend it together, of course. The entryway is enchanted so that only two people bearing the same soulmark may enter together, which is something many young pairs of soulmates will likely take advantage of tonight. Perhaps the people back in the ballroom had expected Claude and Hilda to enter it together tonight.

Perhaps, in another life, Dimitri would be here with Felix instead of Claude. Felix, clinging to Dimitri’s hand, full of hope for the future they will share.

Claude sees Dimitri looking pensively at the doorway, a shadow falling over his eyes.

“Hey.” Dimitri’s gaze drifts back to him. “You know the legend, right? If two soulmates climb the tower together tonight, and make a wish…”

“The goddess will see it granted.” Dimitri gives a wistful little sigh that doesn’t escape Claude’s notice. “Yes, I’ve heard.”

“Well.” Claude grins at Dimitri. “We might not be soulmates, but I’m not going to let that stop me from making a wish.” Dimitri frowns at him, confused, until Claude offers him his hand. 

“I wish you would dance with me.”

Dimitri blinks. 

“Dance…?” He chuckles lightly, which helps ease Claude’s nerves. “We’re too far away to hear the music from the ball, Claude. What will we dance to?”

“I’ll make something up,” he promises, and gestures again, making Dimitri look down at his hand. “C’mon. You were hoping I’d save you one, weren’t you?”

In the dim light of the moon, he cannot tell if Dimitri is blushing. He sincerely hopes so. 

“T-this is… highly improper,” he ventures. His hand hovers just above Claude’s. “Is it not?”

Claude shrugs. “If it is, who’s going to tell on us? The goddess?” He looks at the sky above. “The moon?”

“Heh.” Dimitri looks unsure, but that doesn’t stop him from taking a step forward, reaching for Claude. “I… I fear I will not make as fine a dance partner as you might want.”

Claude dares to wink at him. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

Dimitri rests his hand at the small of Claude’s back as he might for a waltz, but Claude quickly readjusts their positions so that Dimitri’s hand is on his shoulder. His own trembling fingers rest under Dimitri’s arm, just touching his shoulder blade, while he clasps their other hands together, holding them high. 

“Nah, none of your fancy princely dances,” he says, teasingly. “Let me show you how we dance back home.”

And he starts humming as he gracefully sidesteps, carefully leading Dimitri along with him. Dimitri staggers on his feet, almost tripping as he tries to follow Claude, and lets go almost immediately, apologizing.

“I-I’m sorry, I…” 

“It’s okay!” Claude laughs, helping Dimitri right himself. “Just follow my lead, okay? Now: back, step-step, right, step-step…” 

He continues to talk Dimitri through the simple box step, and though Dimitri’s eyes stay fixed on his own feet at first, he seems to grasp the steps relatively quickly, if not particularly gracefully. Still, Claude can’t exactly say he minds. After being apart from him for so many days, he’ll take any reason to keep Dimitri in his arms for as long as possible. 

Claude starts humming again, swaying his hips in time to an old familiar tune from his childhood as they dance. “You don’t have to look so stiff, Your Princeliness,” he teases, falling back on the distance of the old nickname. “You’re doing just fine.”

Dimitri laughs self-consciously, shaking his head. “My apologies,” he says, continuing to keep in step with Claude. “My… my last dance instructor was rather strict.”

Claude raises an eyebrow. “Felix is a strict dance taskmaster, huh? Never would have called that.”

“Not Felix.” Dimitri shakes his head. “It was… a girl I used to know. She would get so angry with me when I stepped on her toes.” As he says so, he trods right on Claude’s foot, and he steps back in alarm. “Ah, Goddess, I’m—!”

“Nope,” Claude says firmly, and gathers Dimitri back into his arms, retaking position. “No more apologies. Seems like she didn’t show you how much fun dancing could be, huh? So let’s have some fun together.”

And without waiting for his reply, he twirls himself under Dimitri’s outstretched arm, extending both their hands between them and winking again, feeling cheeky.

Dimitri chuckles.

“Very well.” He pulls Claude back in, his hand comfortably on Claude’s waist. “Let’s.”

And without another word, he dips Claude low, just as Claude had done with Hilda on the dance floor. Dimitri’s hand on Claude’s back supports him, keeps him from falling, and Claude can feel how hard he’s blushing just from Dimitri using his strength to hold him. From having Dimitri’s face so close to his own.

Claude can only hold on.

Dimitri rights him before too long, pulling Claude close.

“My apologies — I did not want to startle you. You dipped Hilda back in the ballroom, and I only thought to try…”

“Dimitri,” Claude says. They are still swaying in time to some unheard music. “I’ll let you know if we do anything I don’t like, okay?”

He feels, rather than sees, Dimitri nod. 

“Okay.”

They sway a little longer like that, slow, dancing cheek to cheek. Claude’s toes are barely skimming the ground; Dimitri is still holding his hand. He cannot help but close his eyes to savor the feeling of Dimitri’s hand in his, to log and file away the sound of Dimitri absently humming the same waltz that had been playing in the reception hall. This is a moment he wants to preserve in amber, treasure for as long as he can.

As with all things, he must end the moment, though he does not pull away.

“Looks like I got my wish.” He speaks quietly, carefully, feeling the fragile intimacy between them fluttering like a moth. “But you never said what you wish for, Dimitri.”

There is a short huff of breath in Claude’s ear, a tragic wisp of a thing.

“I’m afraid what I want is impossible.”

He sounds so detached as he says it that Claude can’t help but move his hand from Dimitri’s shoulder to his neck, daring to caress the skin there.

“Well,” he says, letting his voice lilt with calculated mischief, “that’s s’posed to be what the goddess is for, right? To help us achieve the impossible.”

There is a pause – Dimitri stops humming, but he does not stop swaying, keeping Claude held close to him. Claude is so, so aware of Dimitri’s hand on the small of his back.

“Perhaps.” He clears his throat, a delicate little cough. Quiet overtakes them again, and Claude resigns himself to never hearing Dimitri’s dearest wish. To letting this die between them too, one more thing left unsaid. 

But then, Dimitri turns his head, brushing his lips against the shell of Claude’s ear. And then… then, he whispers six words that shift the very ground beneath Claude’s feet. 

“I wish you were my soulmate.”

Claude’s whole world stops.

He pulls back by inches, just enough to look Dimitri in the eyes, to gauge how much he means it. Dimitri is looking at him in a way he never has before, with undisguised want. And the fact that Claude knows exactly what Dimitri feels like, that he feels the same way…

In all his weeks of wanting Dimitri, of wanting him to look at Claude exactly like this… he’d never dared to dream how _right_ it would feel. 

“Do…” Dimitri’s voice is hoarse, his gaze fixed on Claude’s mouth. “Do you think such a wish is blasphemous?”

Claude shakes his head minutely. “No. It isn’t.” The words come out as a whisper, leaning in so his nose just brushes against Dimitri’s. “Do you…?”

He does not know what he is about to ask Dimitri, and it hardly matters. Because the next thing Claude knows, they are kissing. 

It was Dimitri who moved, he’s sure of it. Dimitri was the one who finally, finally was brave enough to close the gap between them, tilting his head so that he can press his mouth to Claude’s. Claude can’t help but whimper as he feels it – feels the softness of Dimitri’s mouth press against his, feels the way he trembles in Claude’s arms. And just as he’s about to pull Dimitri that much closer, deepen their first kiss—

—that’s when Dimitri pulls away.

“I…” He withdraws, leaving Claude’s arms cold and bereft. “F-forgive me — Claude, I…” His hands are trembling. “I – should not – have –”

Claude blinks slowly, feeling the world spin around them. He sucks in a breath, not having realized he was holding his for Dimitri. 

“Dimitri,” he says. Every other word he knows seems to have fled his mind. He is left only with _Dimitri, Dimitri, Dimitri._ Flooding every sense, filling up every inch of him.

He’s longed for Dimitri for so long, lusted after him… But he didn’t know another person could fill him up like this, find their way into all his empty spaces. He has never felt this desire for closeness quite so acutely, as though fishing line has hooked itself in his flesh, just below his ribs. He wants to steal Dimitri away, to make a memory with him that Claude can take with him before reality crashes back around them. 

“Claude…” Dimitri’s head falls into his hands, fingers clenching around his hair. “I should not have — this is — I… I…”

“ _Dimitri_ ,” Claude says again, more urgently, surging forward to take Dimitri’s face into his hands. He means to find some sort of words to comfort him, to stop this self-loathing spiral Dimitri keeps falling into; but then Dimitri looks at him, slightly desperate, and Claude suddenly finds he has no desire to talk. 

Dimitri is here. His skin is soft under Claude’s hands, softer than he’d dared to dream it might be. And he just _kissed Claude_. He's proven that these feelings Claude has been harboring for months have not been one-sided. 

And so Claude does the only thing he can. 

“Oh, dearheart,” he murmurs. “Come here.”

He leans in to kiss Dimitri again, not with the soft timidity that Dimitri had shown, but with all the certainty that he’s been feeling for months, the primal hunger and the longing he hasn’t been able to reason his way out of. There is no need to talk himself in circles, not anymore. 

Dimitri _wants him_. Claude’s spent all this time fearing no one would, that Hilda's rejection of him meant he might spend the remainder of his days alone. But it hadn't been true.

The proof is here, in his hands and dripping in starlight. 

Claude eases off, not because he wants to, but because he needs to know that Dimitri is sure. That their first kiss hadn’t been some kind of experiment or wishful thinking, that Claude isn’t getting ahead of himself. But Claude finds his answer when, as soon as they part, Dimitri dives back in again, eager, clumsy, inexperienced, clearly nervous but just as clearly _certain_. 

They both fall into it. 

Claude has very little experience with kissing. No one in Almyra had wanted to kiss him… and Hilda, after they’d matched, had only kissed him once, at their match ceremony, because they’d been expected to. People have told Claude a first kiss feels like an explosion, fireworks bursting against a dark sky, but this kiss, with Dimitri, is more like… the sea. A steady tide pulling at him, reeling him back in to kiss Dimitri again every time they part to take a breath. 

Judging from how Dimitri is holding him, the desperate way he is kissing him… he is feeling the same way. 

It’s an enormous risk they are taking, if either of them paused long enough to consider it. Anyone approaching the Goddess Tower could see them like this, if they were looking. Their arms tight around each other, Claude groaning as he touches Dimitri’s silksoft hair. Dimitri, using his height and strength to back Claude into a corner, deeper into the shadows, his tongue finding its way into Claude’s mouth. 

Claude does not care. Let them look. Let them hate him. 

Here, in Dimitri’s arms, hiding with him in the shadow of the Goddess Tower — the very symbol of the soulmates they have both rejected — Claude has finally found some measure of peace. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This scene - dancing beneath the Goddess Tower and sharing a kiss beneath it - has been in my head ever since I first started brainstorming this fic. I can only hope I did it justice. :)
> 
> We have officially reached the halfway point of this fic! I have to deal with grading for the remainder of the month, so I expect I won't get the next chapter up until 2/2. 
> 
> [Follow me on Twitter!](https://twitter.com/apostaroni)


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